


Grow Where You Are Planted

by rainproof



Category: Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley (Video Game), Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Farm/Ranch, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - No Hale Fire (Teen Wolf), Awesome Laura Hale, F/F, Farmer Stiles Stilinski, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 22:44:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 51,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17907074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainproof/pseuds/rainproof
Summary: The Stilinski family farm is full of memories, secrets, and magic.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Another year, another ridiculous fusion concept from yours truly! This is technically a WIP, currently at 30k words.
> 
> You don't need to have played Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon to enjoy this fic - the basic premise of both games is that you inherit a run-down family farm and spend the game planting crops, earning money, restoring the farm. As the farm grows, so does the town - and your protagonist can marry, have kids, etc, etc.
> 
> Basically this is an incredibly uncomplicated fusion setting. Assume that any unfamiliar names in this story are Stardew Valley NPCs. :)
> 
> Derek's family lives in the Cindersap woods south of the Stilinski farm. Hale General is located where Pierre's is on the map.
> 
> I've tagged this for Harvest Moon as well but there is minimal crossover there - I stole some of that series' festivals and the crop delivery man. Other than those little bits, very little HM canon has been lifted.

•○•

****

**...:10 years ago:…**

•○•

Autumn was in full swing in Beacon Hills, the not-quite bustling beating heart and county seat of rural Stardew Valley. The town square was quaint and classic, lined with the general store, physician’s clinic, saloon, and a series of beautiful flower arrangements lovingly maintained by local residents. At this time of the afternoon the handful of local shops were open, church bells were chiming, and children were pushing and playing and ambling their way home from school.

Five miles west of town at Beacon Farm the noises of town were almost entirely erased - only the distant tolling of the bells was audible to Mitch Stilinski as he rocked gently on his front porch. The familiar sound was comforting and accompanied by delicate birdsong and the shh shh shh of wind in ancient trees.

It was autumn, and the oaks leaves were crisping from green to red. They stood stark against painted blue skies, the contrast bright and cheery. The clouds drifting overhead were so clear and soft that Mitch felt as though he could reach out and snare them between his bony fingertips.

The fields of his farm spread out before him, half-bare in the chilling air. The thick stems of his beloved pumpkin vines were still dotted with late-ripening gourds, while the little vineyard next to the well was swollen and heavy with grapes. Beside them, the deep thistle-purple blossoms of the artichokes had long since browned and transformed into burgeoning green bulbs ready for re-planting next year. Those artichoke stalks reached skywards at drunken angles, casting long shadows over the now-fallow ground where, for many long years, he’d kept a thriving twenty-acre farm alive.

“The mind is willing, but the body fails,” the old man sighed, shaking his head at himself. The changing leaves always left him feeling nostalgic. 

It was Autumn, and these days it was all he could do to keep his little garden producing, but by goddess, it would produce until he was cold in the ground.

Mitch Stilinski was born in the very house he resided in some eighty years ago, and he’d spent all seventy years of his life gazing up at this specific patch of sky, these particular leaves, and at _those_ far-distant stars. Even so… sometimes, standing in the crisp autumn breeze, it felt as though not a moment had passed. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine the afternoon nearly fifty years ago that Alice had slipped up behind him, clapped her hands over his eyes, and sweetly revealed their impending visit from the stork.

This autumn there was no warmth behind him. Fifty-three years they’d been together; Mitch was still learning how to operate around the Alice-shaped hole in his life.

He was jerked out of reverie by the sound of shattering glass.

Mitch’s milky eyes snapped open, eyes darting across his now-fallow western field. Only one outbuilding on this farm could produce such a brightly cacophonous crash – and it was the one building it pained him most to see ruined. He snatched his cane up and eased himself down the stairs, heart thundering painfully in his ears.

It had been years since Mitch was able to move through the fields with ease, but he hobbled on as as best he could, bracing himself against his hand-carved cane. 

Once upon a time the walkways criss-crossing the farm had been cobbled and trellised. He had neatly lined them with Alice’s favorite roses, and had fond memories of waking up in the early morning to the smell of freshly cut flowers. Alice’s green thumb had been, quite literally, magical.

He limped past the well and its tenacious grapevines and grew out of breath as he rounded the remains of their beloved pomegranate orchard. Mitch was force to slow to an awkward speed-walk, huffing and puffing as the cool autumn air stung his lungs. 

Up ahead there was another crash, then another. This was a nightmare - there’d be no glass panes left by the time he made it all the way across the fields. 

Furious, he sucked in another mouthful of frigid air and shouted at the top of his lungs.

“Consarn you boys! I’d better not catch you smashing up that glass house, I’ll string you up by your toenails!”

It was strange, hearing those words come out of his own mouth. It was easy to forget how old he really was. He’d once been a stupid child, throwing rocks for fun - he would have taken back every thrown missile if it could have spared him the panes of the glass house.

He was a lonely old man who missed his wife terribly and kept up his farm as best he could to honor an old and inescapable promise. He’d be content enough if they’d just leave him to his loneliness, but this – this last insult, this mindless, pointless destruction of a precious memory – it was just too much to bear.

“Stop right there or I’ll shoot!” He hollered, waving his cane as though it were a shotgun. Somewhere up ahead he heard the scrambling rush of bodies through bushes and scrub brush, followed by a choked-off, pained yelp.

His petty side hoped they’d ended up in the brambles.

At last he pushed through the final row of trees in the overgrown orchard. Bursting into the clearing where the glass house stood, all of Mitch Stilinski’s worst fears were confirmed. He swayed on his feet, giving up on the cane and leaning heavily onto the slatted wooden fence as he surveyed the damage. Five panes of his beautiful glass house were shattered beyond repair, their remains sparkling scattered in the dying autumn twilight. They were far too high for his reach, and with his now-limited income, they would be far too expensive to repair.

Tears pricked in his eyes as he stared up at the twinkling ruins. He’d built this glass house for Alice over the long winter of her pregnancy, keen to grow the out-of-season fruits and vegetables she craved. That year had been a soft, quiet winter. The mines had been blocked by an avalanche, the river ice had been too thick for fishing… but the construction project had kept him occupied and close at hand. 

The glass house had grown, her belly had swollen, and he’d caulked the last pane the morning her labor pains interrupted their lunch.

Seeing it now, empty and shattered, left tear tracks puddling in the edges of his whiskers.

Another noise sounded off to his right. Mitch jerked instinctively forwards towards the sharp, pained noise - though it sounded more like a wounded animal than a child. Mitch blinked in the hazy twilight, frown deepening. Surely the boys were long gone - young and spry, they’d have leapt the hedges and streaked off towards the road long before he’d even entered the orchard surrounding the old glass house. 

He took a moment to collect himself, forcing his breath to even out to a steadier rhythm before planting his cane into the ground and creeping around the north side of the aged building.

The wild grasses and unkempt patches of overgrown brush slowed his progress; he planted his cane before each step and waded through the knee-high growth with care. Thirty years ago this all would have been greedily reaped for fodder – now it was a haven to rabbits, frogs, and the occasional late-season dragonfly. 

Mitch rounded the corner and froze, breath whistling out of his chest in a rush.

The tall grass on the north side of the glass house was teeming with purple lupine blossoms, each stalk reaching upwards like grasping fingers. Mitch remembered how carefully Alice had sown the first wolfsbane seeds, swearing on her mother’s name that they should be used only to heal and never to harm. He remembered the scent of them drying in the carefully locked toolshed, remembered delivering them to the clinic for Deaton to grind into pastes and potions that would heal the hurt or sick lycanthropes of Beacon Hills. 

The sickly-sweet smell of them here was cloying, too strong and too wild – he should have burned this field when she died.

Another whimper cut through the evening air, and Mitch squinted harder. Something was moving out in the field, something small and dark, hunkered down in the toxic flora. It sounded utterly distraught, whining and whimpering and wheezing.

There – he could just make out a swirl of dark hair, furry ears and – 

A pair of terrified golden eyes flashed at Mitch and the old man stopped stock still.

There was a were-cub in his aconite.

 _Well._

“You’re one of my little vandals, aren’t you?” Mitch asked, leaning heavily on his cane. He dabbed at his cheeks, still damp with the signs of his grief. “What’s your name, child?”

The boy hiccupped and began to sniffle wildly, eerie eyes spilling over with frightened tears. Each panicked inhalation brought on a heavier whiff of the poisonous flowers around him, and his eyes flared brighter and brighter as he lost further control of his shift. Mitch watched in fascination as black fur sprouted along his cheekbones, as his brow-ridge bulged and morphed, as the tiny child turned into something otherworldly.

Otherworldly and sobbing snottily into the sleeve of an old denim jacket. “Puh-puh-please – please duh-don’t – “ 

Mitch raised a hand grumpily. “Calm down, child. You’re making this worse for yourself.” 

“Duh-duh-don’t shoot me,” the boy finally wheezed. “Puh-please don’t, mister, I – I knew it w-wuh-was wrong, but Jackson just – he always tuh-teases me and I duh-duh-didn’t wanna be a sissy an’ I ju-just—“

“Calm the hell down,” Mitch said through gritted teeth. “Come outta that field. These flowers are no good for your kind when they grow wild like this, come back this way.”

The black-haired boy began to cry harder. Ye gads, he wasn’t but a few years older than Mitch’s own grandson. He might be a vandal, but he certainly wasn’t a smug one. 

“No one’s gonna shoot you, child, does this look like it’ll be slinging bullets anytime soon?” Mitch asked, waving his cane at the lavender sky. Even if he was the sort to shoot a were, he certainly wasn’t the sort to shoot a child. “You just come to me and we’ll get you cleaned up.”

Mitch’s eyes narrowed at the aconite; he wondered how much aconite exposure a single could a cub withstand. The boy had obviously blundered into the patch during his panicked escape attempt; he could very well be poisoning himself to death in the shadow of Alice’s glass house.

She’d never forgive Mitch for that.

That thought was all it took to nudge Mitchell into action. With a grunt, he struck out with his cane and waded into the field of aconite. He was careful to press the blossoms to the side rather than trampling them and releasing any more of that sickly sweet scent. He could see the trail the boy had crushed through the stalks and frowned at the length of it. 

As he neared, the terrified cub attempted a growl, but the noise that sounded more like a strangled tomcat that a ferocious beast. Mitch snorted at the effort, but stopped a few paces away from the boy, leaning heavily on his cane. “What’s your name, son?” 

The werewolf was now looking away, his hood tugged up over his tufted ears as though it had suddenly occurred to him to hide his species. Mitch felt the tight ball of anger at the broken glass loosen and disappear at the pathetic sight. 

“I wasn’t born yesterday, boy,” he said grudgingly. “It’s clear as day that you’re a wolfcub. No sense hiding those ears from me.”

The boy’s eyes snapped up, comically wide. “Are you a--”

Realization dawned. Oh, goddess - this child thought he was an _Argent_. “I’m no hunter,” he said brusquely. “I'm a farmer. I'm in the business of life, not death."

Derek licked his lips, glancing around at the aconite surrounding them.

"I thought you’d know that, with us being neighbors and all," Mitch muttered, frowning "My Alice only planted this wolfsbane for the local emissary. He used it in medicines, and to whip up young Peter’s favorite single-malt. It was safer having it here than anywhere closer to the Hale property.”

The boy hiccupped, but the line of tension in his shoulders eased ever so slightly. “You … you know my uncle?”

“I know your whole family,” Mitch said. “And I know your mother won’t think much of you knocking the panes outta my greenhouse.”

That touched off another round of tears. Whoops.

“She’ll think even less of me lettin’ you poison yourself to death in my hayfield, so you’d best come with me. I think I’ve still got a little antidote lyin’ around somewhere,” Mitch said, matter-of-factly. When the boy didn’t stand up, he sighed. “If I come over there, are you gonna punch holes in me like you did my glass-house?”

The kid’s expression shifted from panicked to affronted. “No!” said the cub, offended. “I’d never hurt a human.” When his eyes faded from their panicked golden shade they were a pale blue-green – the eyes of his father. “I’m – I’m ju-just afraid to move, everything smells so – so –“  
“Shh,” said Mitchell. “I got you.”

Later that night Mitch would marvel at the strength he didn’t know he still had in him. He knelt, scooping the cub up and shifting him to one hip, his cane clumsily knocking against his knees as he did so. The boy wasn’t light, but he wasn’t so heavy in his arms, either. His knobby knees hooked around Mitch’s hips automatically. That helped a bit, distributing the weight away from his aching lower back. 

“How old are you?” Mitch asked, stretching his cane out to part the toxic purple blossoms and carefully moving between them.

“Seven,” the boy said, softly.

“Ah,” Mitch nodded, as though it all made sense. He turned and began to walk, his left arm looped around the boy’s back and his right arm taut as he leaned his weight on his cane. “Seven’s far too young to enter a life of crime. My son’s a policeman, you know. He knows all about the crooks who start young.”

The boy hiccupped and scrubbed his sleeve against his nose. When he pulled it away, Mitch’s heart nearly stopped in his chest – the cuff was bloody, as was the kid’s upper lip.

 _’Shit,’_ he thought. It was an awful long way from the glass house to his little cabin – but by god, he’d make it there in time. 

He picked up his pace, letting the boy’s head loll against his shoulder despite the wolfsbane-induced nosebleed.

“You know,” Mitch said, trying to keep the child’s attention. He wasn’t sure what aconite would do to a child – but the boy’s head was sagging and you didn’t have to be an emissary to know that falling asleep when poisoned was a bad idea. “You don't have to do everything the other boys tell you to do.”

“He calls me a werewhuhh….” The boy said muzzily, mouth working against the collar of Mitch’s coat.

“What was that?” Mitch asked, jolting his arm and dislodging the boy. He sat up a bit straighter, blinking golden eyes up at him in bleary confusion.

“What did that Whittemore boy call you?” Mitch asked, gentling his tone. They’d cleared the shadows of the orchard now – the trellis path and garden walk were all that stood between them and the phone that would summon all the help they needed.

The boy sniffled, and a gooey a gob of black-tinged blood began oozing its way from his left nostril. “A _werewuss_.”

Mitch couldn’t help it – despite the blood and the shattered glass and the twinge in his lower back he threw back his head and laughed. “A _werewuss_?!”

It was probably the wrong thing to do, as the boy started squirming instantly in his arms. It almost knocked him off balance, and he reached out, catching the edge of a wrought-iron trellis edged with long-dead ivy for support. 

“I’m not laughing at you, cub—“ he said, gasping with the effort to stay upright. “That’s just the stupidest darn name I’ve ever heard a bully sling around. He’s jealous of you and yours, and you’re letting him goad you into petty vandalism. You’re a Hale! No man worth his salt in these parts would think you were anything but brave and fierce. The Hale family protects these woods, this farm, all of Stardew Valley.”

“Jackson says I’m the runt of the litter,” the boy muttered, after a long moment of silence.

“Jackson’s clearly a goddamn idjit,” Mitch informed him, rounding the corner and working his way past the grapevines. It was almost too dim now to see the spiny fingerleaves of the artichokes against the evening sky, but the light in his tiny cabin kitchen was twinkling merrily in the distance, growing closer and closer with each weary step.

Step, shift, cane, step. Step, shift, cane, step. When he reached the base of the porch, the fingers gripping the boys’ hip were numb. 

Later, he would have no idea how he’d traversed the stairs – but they made it, and soon Mitch had deposited the cub into his favorite green chair. After a moment’s consideration he carefully tipped the recliner backwards until the boy was lounging, blood-smeared face pressed into old leather.

Mitch hunkered down, reaching out to thumb the boy’s dark hair off his sweaty, pale forehead. His ears were still out, and his pupils were enormous pools of blackness ringed with green, feverish and hooded. “You still with me?”

The boy blinked once, twice, then licked his lips. “Yeah.”

“You never did tell me your name,” Mitch said, trying to sound cheerful. “I’m Mitch. Most just call me Old Man Mitch, but I s’pose you knew that.”

The boy nodded weakly. His eyelids sagged, then blinked open again, gold and glowing. “I’m Derek,” he whispered. “Derek Hale.”

 

•○•

Mitch had known the Hales by proxy for most of his adult life, though they had never been close with the younger generation – and by 'younger' he meant Talia and her husband, not the newest brood. He’d known Talia when she was young, and attended her parents' wedding with Alice. Edna Hale had been Alice’s number one competition in the autumn pie festival.

When Edna and Ernest owned and operated the Hale General, he’d been in there almost every day. They bought his produce and Alice’s flowers and paid him half in cash, half in store credit. By the time Talia inherited the store, Mitch and Alice were farming more for themselves than others, though Alice still brought over the extra eggs and blooms whenever she felt able to stroll.

Yes, in a town as small as Beacon Hills, it would have been hard _not_ to be acquaintances with the Hales. The fact that they were werewolves – well, that was less well-known, but Mitch had known for years and years. You couldn’t stay married to a woman like Alice without being formally connected to the village’s supernatural community.

Still, none of that prepared him for the bustle of life that ensued when he was informally inducted into the Pack.

For few days or so after Derek’s ill-fated encounter with the aconite bed, life grew quiet again. Mitch busied himself around the property in his usual way, harvesting what crops he could before the frost set in. He always lost a few, as he was slow to harvest and only rarely had the strength to take a batch into town, but he tried. In the evenings, he ambled back to the shattered glass house and worked his way through the Aconite, trimming it back until all that remained was the 6x6 bed his wife had planted so many years ago. He piled it in the center of the clearing and rang Alan Deaton to come pick it up.

A full week later found Talia Hale standing on his doorstep, a fully-recovered Derek in tow. When Mitch answered the door her moon-eyed son stepped forward to apologize for the green house. 

Fully mended there was more color to his cheeks, and his furry self was nowhere in sight. He tipped his chin up and gazed directly at Mitch, thick eyebrows furrowed seriously. 

“I’m sorry, Mr. Mitch, for breaking your glass house. I’m going to help you fix the damage, and I’m going to tell the other boys at school to leave you alone.”

It was a good apology. There was none of that shoe-shuffling mumbled apologies so popular with other children. Derek was clearly a proud boy; no wonder he’d been goaded into going along with his friends’ plan to wreck the greenhouse. Pride, Mitch knew, often covered up a sensitive nature.

“I will accept your apology,” Mitch said, leaning against the doorframe, “if your mother will let me borrow you on Saturday afternoon. I’ve got fruit left on the vines, and I’m terribly slow at picking.”

Derek whipped around to look hopefully at his mother. “Can I, mom?”

Talia nodded. “I think that’s a good idea.”

She glanced at the yard, inhaling slowly as though tasting the air. Mitch wondered what she sensed when she added: “You should also stop be on your way to school. You can pick up the produce and drop it off by the shop every morning.”

Could she smell the ripe fruit growing fat and rotten? Did she know how much it pained his arthritic wrists to pluck the swollen grapes from the vine?

Once upon a time Mitch would have knelt down to be eye level with Derek and speak with him man to man – but kneeling in the cool October evening was out of the question. He still couldn’t believe he’d walked all the way from the greenhouses with this young man in tow – perhaps Alice or her mother had a hand it in, lending him strength from afar.

“I would like that,” Mitch said, firmly. “My grandson is a bit younger than you, but he lives all the way in Beacon City. It’s hard for him to come out and help.”

Derek nodded seriously. “Okay,” he said, looking determined. “I’ll be here around seven to pick up anything that’s ready for shipment. An’ I’m good at picking -- I know when everything is ripe, because mom makes me compost anything at the shop that gets too mushy.” He tipped his head back and huffed, about as subtle as a ton of bricks. “We should start with the grapes,” he decided, looking up at his mother for confirmation.

“Don’t look at me,” Talia said, gently. “Ask Mr. Mitch.”

“Just Mitch is fine,” Mitch said. 

“May I start with the grapes?”

Mitch grinned down at him, stroking his whiskers thoughtfully. “You certainly may.”

•○•


	2. Chapter 2

•○•

**...:Year 1, Winter 26:…**

•○•

“I know something you don’t know, I know something –“

Derek scowled down at the red plastic trowel in his hand, refusing to give Cora the satisfaction of a response. Shoving the scoop into one of the heavy burlap sacks stacked in the backroom of the Hale Family General Store, he tapped against the bag until it was relatively level, then quickly tumped its contents into a metal scale on the counter. He squinted at the numbers and then added a smidge more, topping it up until he had exactly one pound of seed.

“Come on, Derek, I _know_ you want to know.”

He really, really didn’t. Beacon Hills was a quiet place smack-dab in the center of the rural Stardew Valley, so most of Cora’s “cutting edge” gossip related to who was pining after whom and what exciting new fish Willy caught down at the dock. 

Derek tipped the scale’s metal bucket into a heavy plastic sac and twisted a tie around the top of the one-pound bag labeled “KALE” in big green letters. He shoved it to one side and snagged the scoop again, the motion practiced. Spring was coming up fast – he’d bagged one hundred bags of cauliflower seeds yesterday, and they needed at least twice that amount of kale for the upcoming season.

“The Stilinski farm is off the market,” Cora informed him, startling Derek into dropping the scoop.

“What?” he asked, turning to his sister as soon as he’d fished the scoop out from under the table. “It’s been sold?”

“I didn’t say sold,” Core corrected him primly, leaning against the doorjamb with a grin. “I said off the market.”

“That’s the same thing,” Derek pointed out, frowning.

“Hardly!”

Derek swallowed hard, silent despite the adrenaline rushing through his veins. He tried to imagine someone other than Old Man Stilinski sitting on that porch, tending those gardens, seeding the old glass house -

“Earth to Derek, come in, Derek,” Cora said, flapping her hands in front of his face.

Derek glared at her, then forced himself to take a deep breath. “Sorry,” he managed to get out, turning back to the empty seedbags. “What does that mean, exactly?”

“It means that Old Man Stilinski had one son, and that one son had one son, and the kid is coming round to fix the place up and try his hand at the family business."

“Great,” Derek muttered, shoving the scoop back into the kale seeds with more force than was strictly necessary. When he pulled it free a layer of seeds avalanched over the edges and went scattering across the floor. “Some rich city kid playing farmer for kicks, that’s just great.”

“Come on, Derek!” Cora exclaimed, sounding genuinely excited. “New blood! New conversation! New business! New _dating prospects_!” Derek didn’t need to look up to know that Cora was waggling her eyebrows at him. 

He swallowed, looked down at the burlap in his white-knuckled hands and shrugged. “It’s a shame it’s in the hands of an amateur,” he muttered uncharitably. “It should have gone to an actual farmer - someone who could make it profitable, sell us some local produce and give us an edge over those Big Box bastards.”

“Mom always said farming was in that family’s blood,” Cora pointed out. “Hopefully he’ll have a green thumb.”

“Hopefully,” Derek agreed, without much actual hope in him.

•○•

Twenty minutes later found Derek hunkered against the shelves in the back room, gripping his cell phone tightly and straining to keep his voice down.

“Can they _do_ that?!” he growled, gritting his teeth. “How can they do that?”

“It’s their property, nephew. They can do whatever they want,” Peter said into his ear, patiently.

Derek took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and then completely failed to stay calm. Damn it - he wanted to shift and howl and run away from the awful sense of loss welling up inside of him... but no. Not now. 

Not when he had another hour and a half of shift left; besides, he couldn’t leave his seventeen year old sister to tend the shop alone. He settled for venting at Peter - an act that was never particularly productive. “It’s been on the market for _six years_! They’ve dropped the price three times!”

“Maybe all it took was a real offer for them to realize they were too attached to the place to let it go,” his uncle said, almost absently. Derek imagined him sitting at the desk in his office, tapping away at his computer while absently fielding Derek’s emotional breakdown.

“That’s not…” Derek swallowed back the words, throat tight.

“Fair?” Peter guessed, infuriatingly correct. “Of course it’s not fair, Derek. But I told you not to get your heart set on one property until the paperwork was signed - there are plenty of other farms in the area. Something will come up.”

Derek didn’t _want_ another farm. He wanted _that_ farm, full of summer memories of a kind old man.

He tried to think rationally.

“Can we…. increase the offer?” he tried. Maybe the kid was turning up to spruce things up and jack up the price. If that were the case, a more generous offer might inspire him to spare himself the trouble. Derek would have to borrow, but—

“They’re not holding out for more money, Derek. It’s off the market entirely, you can’t place a formal offer on a property that’s not for sale. Well, not without tracking down the family – I suppose we might be able to mail a letter…”

“Do you think that would work?” Derek asked, a terrible tendril of hope rekindling inside of him.

Peter barely paused. “No. Not in this situation. Their agent suggested the reason for removing it from the market was personal, and sentimentality can’t be reasoned with.”

That last bit was said more than a bit judgmentally; Peter didn’t approve of Derek sinking his life savings into a dying farm in small town America. He was only helping broker the deal as a favor, and Peter’s favors were never free.

Silence hung between them for a long moment. Derek closed his eyes and then leaned back against the stock shelf, defeated. “So that’s… that’s just it?”

Peter sighed in his ear. “Yes, Derek. I’m afraid that’s it.”

Derek ended the call and stood in the dusty stock room until Cora, annoyed by his absence, made him take register and pretend to smile at customers for the rest of his shift.

•○•

 

Derek caught his first glimpse of the Stilinski kid on the fourth day of Spring when one hundred and eighty pounds of scrawny, pale city slicker opened the door to _Hale Family_ and froze in place. 

From his perch up the ladder at the back of the shop Derek could only see the silhouette of the newcomer. Moments later the screen door came swinging shut, banging into the man’s heels and sending him stumbling into the shop proper. 

“Welcome to Hale Family General,” Laura said from her spot at the front counter, looking up with an automatic smile. She was as friendly and outgoing as Derek was surly, so it was only when she lapsed into surprised silence that Derek glanced down for a better look.

He knew instantly who the kid was – though calling him a ‘kid’ wasn’t entirely fair. Stilinski the Younger was tall, lanky, and pale save a swath of angry red sunburn stretching across his nose, forehead, and the tips of his ears. He wore jeans and a t-shirt topped with a plaid button-down, and every inch of the ensemble was dusty. His eyes were intelligent, deep brown, and currently fixed on Derek..

Derek shifted the box of sprinkler parts under one arm, hanging easily onto the ladder with the other, and lifted his eyebrows judgmentally. “Can we … help you?”

“Um, yes,” the kid said, quickly dropping his gaze away. Derek suspected he was blushing, though it would be impossible to tell given that his face was already sunburned enough to resemble a fire hydrant. “I’m, um. I’m new in town, and Mayor Lewis told me this was the place for farming equipment?”

“Ah!” Laura said, brightening. “You must be the Stilinski kid!”

Derek rolled his eyes. Pssh - as though Laura hadn’t grilled Erica for every single detail about the new guy in town the moment they’d learned the farm was occupied. He was one hundred percent confident Laura had already Facebook-stalked this kid into oblivion. She probably knew the names of his entire extended family and all of his high school friends.

“That’s me,” the kid said, smiling tiredly, wiggling his fingers in the grubbiest attempt at jazz hands Derek had ever seen. He approached the counter and stuck out one dusty hand for Laura to shake. “I’m Stiles.”

“Stiles Stilinski?” Laura shook, then wiped her hand off on her jeans. “That’s… unusual.”

“I’m named after grandpa,” Stiles said by way of explanation – and Laura winced in sympathy. They’d all seen Old Man Stilinski’s name on the headstone at his funeral service, and not one eulogist had attempted to pronounce it. It had been supremely obvious why he’d gone by ‘Mitch’ instead.

“Well, Stiles. Welcome to Beacon Hills. I’m Laura, and that grumpybear on the ladder is my baby brother Derek.”

Derek eased a heavy box of sprinkler parts under his free arm and gingerly climbed down the ladder, hands-free. He dropped them on one of the long work tables behind the counter and gave Stiles a once-over at close range. “Hey,” he said, cracking open one of the boxes and not giving Stiles a second glance.

“Hey,” Stiles echoed, swallowing hard.

“What can we do for you, Stiles?” Laura asked. 

Stiles fished into the back pocket of his jeans for what proved to be a bettered shopping list scrawled in the messiest chicken-scratch handwriting Derek had ever seen. It was mostly household goods – cleaning supplies, toilet paper and the like – but included a few farming items at the end. 

“I’ve got the closest fields tilled,” Stiles said, looking immensely proud of himself. “I’m just not sure what crops will be best to begin with. I’ve never been much of a gardener…” he admitted. “I was thinking strawberries, maybe?”

Laura made a hmm-ing sound as she glanced over his list. “Honestly, fruit can be tricky. “Since it’s your first year I’d start with something a bit more hardy and better able to withstand any late freezes or chills. You’re going to want a scarecrow out in the fields sooner rather than later with anything other than tubers.”

“Oh,” Stiles said, chewing on his bottom lip. He had very full lips, Derek noticed (with annoyance). In fact, his entire face might have been painfully attractive, if it hadn’t been chapped and sunburned within an inch of its life. 

“We offer seeds for kale, cauliflower, parsnips, potatoes, and starters for green beans. We also have a reasonable selection of floral seeds and fruit tree seedlings,” Laura said easily, sliding over the newly-printed stock list. “I’d recommend a few quick-growing crops like parsnips to tide you over, and a few rows of plants with longer growth-cycles so that you’re not harvesting everything at once, and your cash-flow is manageable.” 

Derek moved away from the conversation, over to the small personal care section of the store. He pulled a bottle of sunscreen off the shelf, a tube of chapstick, and a pair of gloves – if Stiles’ nose was so red and lips were so chapped, Derek was certain his hands must be covered in blisters. If the items weren’t on his list, they certainly should be.

He moved back towards the front of the store just in time to here Stiles sigh.

“I had no idea fertilizer was so expensive,” the kid said, shoulders slumped in defeat as he inspected the bag of fertilizer Laura had heaved up onto the counter.

“This stuff is really high in nitrogen,” Laura said. “It’s great for quality crops. But to be honest, given how long some of those fields at your place have laid fallow, you might just be able to get away with tilling in the grass and weeds and calling it good… for this year, anyway.”

“Okay,” Stiles nodded. “I mean, I basically already did that. It took three and a half days… I don’t know how Grandpa did it. Any of it. Sleeping in that crummy spider-infested house, waking up at the ass-crack of dawn, running a farm without a single tractor…”

Irritation flared within Derek – that was _rich_. If someone – anyone, anyone at all in that family had given a damn about the old man or his home, it wouldn’t be a run-down, “spider-infested” mess. It was a beautiful, classic old home that Stilinski had always been proud of, and it had deserved better than to sit there empty for ten years just because his family was too damned lazy to do anything with it. 

_“I built this for the love of my life,”_ he’d told Derek, patting the creaky porch railing while Derek leveled out the steps. _“It’s a bit too big for an old man like me, but living here reminds me of her.”_

Derek’s grip tightened around the sunscreen and chapstick in one hand, and he shoved them back onto a shelf at random. He’d reshelve them properly later that day, before Laura could complain that they were out of place. 

Honestly, if Stiles Stilinski had bothered, even once, to come out and visit his grandfather he would have an idea of what he was doing. Derek had worked at the Stilinski farm for years and not once, not even _once_ , had this kid or his worthless father paid the old man a visit. 

Derek grit his teeth and went back to his sprinkler parts, shoving smooth joints onto aluminum pipe lengths and pretending not to hear Laura when she asked him to help carry Stiles’ purchases back to the farm.

•○•

**...:Year 1, Spring 5:…**

•○•

Talia Hale, owner of the Hale Family General Store, worked Monday, Wednesday and Friday, days when Laura watched their youngest siblings. Her Monday morning routine was to sit behind the register, tabulating sales totals and adjusting their inbound orders for the following week. The store’s skylights let the early spring sunlight drift in through the rafters, picking out the threads of grey in her long dark hair, making it shine like silvery cobwebs.

She looked up when Derek re-entered the shop, hefting a box of flour. “Derek, sweetie, will you add Stiles to your shipping run today? He’s got some parsnips for us.” 

Derek wasn’t sure where she’d met Stiles, but he was completely unsurprised that she had. Erica and Laura might indulge regularly in shameless gossip, but his mother knew exactly what was actually going on in town – and she never spoke about anyone’s business but her own.

Derek loved her. But he didn't love the idea of heading over to the Stilinski farm. The last thing he wanted to see was this kid setting up shop, erasing the old, comfortably familiar features of the farm. 

“It’s out of my way,” he said with a frown, unpacking the bags of flour. Nobody in Stardew Valley was growing wheat anymore – all their “local” flour was imported from outside the valley. “I’m doing the east run and train depot today.”

“It’s his very first crop, dear. We need that boy to sell to Hale Family and _not_ to Joja – you _know_ they’re now accepting local produce,” she said, eyes gone flinty. JojaMart had only been in town for half a year, but the resultant drop in sales at Hale General had everyone in the family worried. Joja’s unbeatably low made-in-China prices were literally impossible to beat without sending Hale General out of business. 

Derek grimaced. 

“From here on out you can drop by in the mornings – if you go take that left at Marnie’s you can cut through the south Stilinski fields on your way to work.”

“Yes, mom,” Derek sighed. He knew exactly how to get to the Stilinski property – he’d cut through the fields all of his life – and in more recent years, he’d done so with a critical eye, envisioning what could be improved and revitalized, how much energy and time it would take to bring the farm back to what it used to be.

His mother squinted at him and then slid her readers off her nose. “Give him a chance, Derek,” she said, quietly. “It’s hard to be the new kid in town.”

Derek – who had grown up on the same property where his great grandparents were born – supposed that might be true. Still, if he’d visited once or twice, he wouldn’t be a stranger, now would he? This was karma, plain and simple, and Derek wasn’t going to be cheerful about hauling shipments for that brat.

He left the Stilinski farm for last, covering his eastern run – picking up more pipe joints from Boyd and Clint at the smithy, sending off three big boxes of milk Marnie had brought by that morning -- and then doubling back west until he’d passed the clinic, the bus stop, and finally found the entrance to Stiles’ farm.

Derek remembered standing at that very gate, feigning bravery despite his growing fear and unease as Jackson Whitmore dared him to knock out one of the windows in the greenhouse with a stone. He shoved the thought away, steeled himself, and moved through the creaky metal gate.

Once he was beyond the fence he found that the property was surprisingly recognizable. Some part of him had believed Stiles would be indelibly stamped on the property now – but things were, by and large, much as they had been for years. The house was still there, the porch dusty and one step missing half its planks, but the frame was solid and sound. Derek had to look away before he started thinking too hard about Grandpa Stilinski calling out instructions for how his Christmas lights should hang. 

The forest had all but moved in over the years the house had sat empty, grass and weeds and boulders knocked loose from the hills above dotting what had once been wide, fertile fields. There, at least, Stiles’ work was visible – the nearest field had been cleared of stones, weeds and trees and neatly tilled. The first few rows were clearly parsnips, with kale further back and – if Derek wasn’t mistaken – several rows of potatoes as well. As he approached, a big black crow squawked and took wing, fresh leaves hanging from its beak.

Stiles appeared from behind the house, looking even dirtier than he had the last time Derek saw him. He had a hoe cocked over one shoulder; when he reached Derek he planted the tool firmly against the ground and leaned heavily into it. His nose had progressed from lobster-red to shrimpy-pink and peeling.

“Hey, man,” Stiles said, happy despite his dusty sunburn. “I wasn’t sure you’d make it out today.”

“Talia insisted,” Derek said, skipping the pleasantries entirely. 

“Ah,” Stiles said, shifting against the hoe. “Well, I appreciate you coming all this way. I’m pretty excited about my first crop, and the wallet could use a little hit, if you know what I mean!”

He patted his back pocket enthusiastically, and Derek manfully didn't let his eyes follow the action and settle on his slim hips.  
He was wearing _skinny jeans_. Who farmed in _skinny jeans?_

Stiles continued, unfazed by the silence -- apparently he responded to unfriendliness with aggressively cheerful chatter. “I’ve only got the first few rows pulled up – but if you swing by tomorrow, I should have a few more out of the ground.”

Derek folded his arms over his chest and looked the field over. Stiles shifted next to him, perpetually energized. “I can come by in the mornings on my way to work; if you have any produce ready to ship you can drop it in the shipping crate and I’ll check it each morning.” 

“I dunno if I’m gonna get that much done tonight – would you consider adding me to your afternoon runs?” Stiles asked hopefully.

“No,” Derek told him, voice flat. “I do the west side of town in the mornings.” That was mostly true – but there weren’t as many farms on the west side, so the run was short and sweet.

“…oh,” Stiles said weakly. He’d clearly expected Derek to bow down to his busy social schedule. He’d learn sooner or later that Derek wasn’t half as cheerful as the rest of the town’s residents. 

“You could always deliver your own vegetables,” Derek said, straining to keep his tone professional.

“Sure, if I had an extra four hours a day,” Stiles said, looking skeptically over the broad swath of planted field. “So… where to I get a shipping crate?”

Derek stared at him for a long moment, then looked pointedly over at the high grass just off the side of the porch. 

When Stiles glanced at the grass in confusion, Derek sighed. “Please tell me you actually own a scythe.”

“Yeah, sure,” Stiles said. “Fair warning - it's seen better days.” He padded back to the shed at the side of the house and produced a small, familiar hand-scythe from the rickety toolshed. 

It was rustier than Derek remembered. 

Stiles held the scythe up, so Derek plucked it unceremoniously out of his hands, rough fingertips brushing against Stiles’, before he turned around and waded into the grass.

Derek liked the physicality of farm work – lifting, moving, growing. He threw himself into cutting back the tufts of wild grass with a vengeance, taking satisfaction in the feel of steel biting into the thick stalks down near the ground. When he’d hacked enough down that the lid of the shipping crate was visible, he used the side of his dusty boots to sweep the fallen grass into a pile.

“Build a silo and you can use cut grasses like this for fodder,” he told Stiles absently, bending over to pull out a stubborn tuft at the roots. It was a shame to see any cut hay go to waste.

“I _have_ been thinking about chickens,” Stiles admitted, reaching for a stray stalk of grass and twisting it between his fingers. 

His cheeks were very pink. God, did the kid not understand the concept of sunscreen? Derek turned, arms flexing as he continued his work.

The shipping crate emerged slowly – it was the same heavy wooden box that Derek had, as a teenager, helped Farmer Stilinski fill at the end of every season.

“Huh,” Stiles said, wide-eyed. “I had no idea that was even...” he squinted suspiciously at the crate as Derek gave it a few good thumps with the shaft of the scythe and then flipped the lid open, checking for early-season snakes or anything eager to snack on a fresh parsnip.

“I wonder what else is hiding on this farm?” Stiles mused aloud, looking past the porch and small, spring fields towards the overgrown property at large.

Somewhere back there, Derek knew, was the greenhouse. He remembered an orchard, and a shrine, the mouth of a dark cave that he hadn’t been allowed to enter….

“Where are these parsnips?” he asked, gruffly.

Stiles brightened and led Derek over to where he was clearly trying – and failing – to fence in the closest fields. There were four good-sides burlap bags laying there in the dust, each full of unwashed parsnips. Derek pulled one out and inspected it thoughtfully, brushing the dirt free with his fingers.

They were - huh. Derek turned the parsnip over in his hand, surprised into silence. This was a good-looking vegetable - it was large, shapely, and - when he brushed away the dirt with the pad of his thumb - the flesh was an enticingly bright white. He pulled out two more, setting them on the lid of the shipping crate. 

It wasn’t a gold-star crop, but it wouldn’t take much effort to get them there. 

Derek blinked. “These...

“What do you think?”

“They look fine,” Derek told him, incapable of admitting how impressed he felt. There was no sense inflating this kid’s ego over a few reasonable parsnips. Mitch had been tilling fertilizer into these fields for years - the quality of this produce likely spoke more to his skill than Stiles’. “Won’t know ‘til we taste-test them, though.”

Stiles beamed, stuffing his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and rocking back on the balls of his feet. “You know,” he said, “I’ve never even eaten a parsnip. I had to google them when Laura sold me the seeds.”

Derek stared at him incredulously; the longer he stared, the further Stiles’ smile dimmed. Finally, the younger man looked away, wiping at the sweat beaded on his forehead. “I mean they’re basically just fancy carrots, right? They never carried them at the Joja supermarket back home.”

“City boy,” Derek said, rolling his eyes. The idea of Stiles shopping at a huge commercial chain like Jojamart made him want to kick something; instead he wrapped his hands around the bags and hauled them towards the gate and his parked bike. They were heavy, but it was nothing compared to his werewolf strength. Once the parsnips were secured he threw a leg over his bike and kicked away the stand before looking back at Stiles.

Stiles, who was was staring like he’d never seen a motorbike before. God, this kid was so _weird_.

“We’ll run these through the wash this morning and get them out on the floor today. Mom normally pays out on Friday. That work for you?”

 

“Y-yeah,” Stiles said, licking his lips. “I’ll see you Friday, Derek.”

Derek gunned the engine just a bit more than necessary as he sped away, feeling Stiles’ eyes on him until he rounded the bend and vanished out of sight.

•○•

Stiles shoved his arms elbow-deep deep into the wooden bucket and scooped up the frigid water. He splashed his face generously, willing the icy shock of it to wash away his flustered flush. Derek Hale was very clearly Not Interested in him - and even if he was, the very idea of dating again made Stiles break out in hives. And yet, the moment their hands had brushed had sent a jolt through Stiles' entire body, his spark sitting up at attention and practically begging for more contact - 

No, no, no, no, _no_. The point of this damn move was to slow down and un-complicate his life; panting after a hot neighbor was exactly the opposite of uncomplicated. Panting after an incredibly hot neighbor who liked to wrap his hands around tools and bend over -- 

He splashed another handful against his face, running frigid palms over his face with a groan.

Stiles only stepped away from the well when he could no longer feel his fingertips and combed them through his hair, exhaling slowly. Derek might be gorgeous in a broody way and build like a brick house, but he was the least of Stiles' problems. He needed to get his house in order before he started flirting with handsome delivery-boys.

With that in mind he drew his mind back to the farm, eyes wandering over the fields before dumping the rest of the water into his watering can and moving towards the long, furrowed-fields to begin his morning watering routine.

He inhaled, exhaled, and flexed his fingertips.

There was something relaxing about this part of his day. The repetitive motion of swinging the watering can, lifting, pouring clean water, delivering life to the green sprouts working their way through the earth… it was meditative. Stiles enjoyed the smell of fertile soil and the buzz and hum of nearby bugs, though he was careful to pick any off the leaves of his plants if he found them trying to munch on his crops. Midway down one row of leafy greens he found that his smallest kale seedling was still struggling, the edges of its leaves turning a pale yellow-brown.

Stiles frowned and set his watering can down. He ran a finger along the edge of the leaf, closing his eyes to feel for the root of the problem.

He felt the pulse of chlorophyll, then slow creep of roots, and then - deep below the surface - a biting, gnawing sensation.

Frowning, Stiles scooped the dirt aside with his gloved hand, digging down about four inches just to the left of the plant. His fingers scraped past root and rock before striking something suspiciously soft and squishy.

He pulled the grub up and raised it to eye level. “Gotcha, you little creep,” he said fiercely, before raising a hand to the weak little plant and opening his fingers wide.

“Sky and rain, sun and soil - grow, small one, prevail.”

Stiles closed his eyes, centering himself, and exhaled. The spark within him flickered to life, tingling magical energy radiating out into his fingers and his toes. When he touched the plant again, the little leaves straightened and deepened in color, stretching up as tall as they could. The damage of the grub wasn’t exactly undone - the root system was still nibbled to pieces - but the plant had all the nutrients it would need to survive while new tendrils of root wound their way deeper into the earth.

Pulling his focus away, Stiles blinked his eyes open and re-adjusted to seeing with his physical sight, rather than his magical. He flexed his hand, dissipating the remnants of magic into the still-cool spring afternoon.

 _‘That was good,’_ he thought to himself, pleased. He’d called upon his magic and the spark had answered, strong and steady. There was no sign of the weak, unreliable magic that had plagued him for the last eight months.

Stiles wondered if he had enough strength in him to banish grubs from his field in the same way he’d banished the more damaging members of the insect population. Was there any upside to having grubs like this on his land? The soil on the farm was rich and productive, but the grubs were an unforeseen complication. He turned the creature over in his gloved hand and frowned down at its misshapen body. Every single grub he'd found devouring his crops looked just slightly... off.

The grub’s segmented body was dotted with lesions, and there was a strange purple tinge to the mandibles and head. The sight of it made Stiles uneasy. While the lesions could be a mutation due to some kind of pollution in the ground or water, Stiles was convinced the grub population was being affected by a magical field. Could there be something buried deep within the earth and affecting the creatures that moved through it…?

Stiles sucked on the inside of his cheek for a moment, lost in thought, before dropping the bug into a gunny-sack at his hip and continuing with his watering routine.

Life in Beacon Hills was - well, it was very different than what Stiles was used to. After years in the city, the farm was terribly quiet and isolated. Granted, that was exactly what Stiles had asked for, but … he hadn’t quite mentally prepared for a life without cell service or an internet connection. For all that he was as witchy as a witch could be, Stiles had always been more of a Harry Dresden style urban mage than a forest-dwelling Radagast. Even so, his magic had a tendency to cause leaves to burst from the trees in February, and to bloom houseplants any time he had a date over - there was definitely _some_ kind of magical connection going on there...

The lack of an internet connection was particularly vexing. Stiles had brought with him a cache of magical books for research and practice, but he hadn’t realized how much he relied on the internet for material until it was cruelly ripped away. He’d reached out for quotes on getting it installed at the farm, but it would probably be summer before he could manage the heavy cost of laying lines past the bus station.

In the meantime he would have to seize the opportunity to read and work without distraction. And, now that his first round of crops were in the ground, he could head into the woods and investigate whatever was twinging at the ley lines beneath his property.

Stiles left the watering can on his porch next to the doorway and checked to see that the door was secure, checking first the physical and then the magical barriers. Stardew Valley was so safe that it didn’t even employ its own police force, relying instead on the county sheriff and his staff - but Stiles was a city boy and would be damned if he wandered off the farm with his front door unlocked or his wards disarmed.

Slinging his backpack over his shoulders, Stiles struck out towards the southern exit of his fields, where the Stilinski property line butted up against the Cindersap woods. At the mouth of his field he looked around. The town would be to his left, and if he squinted he could just make out the roofs of a few buildings. Somewhere in the distance a cow mooed. 

There was a clearing before him that stretched away, flower-spotted and wild, towards a woodsy stream and a rickety wooden bridge. The path that wound away to his right moved into denser forest dotted with the occasional blooming cherry blossom tree.

Following his instinct, Stiles let his feet direct him down the right-hand path. It would be a good running route if he decided to take up his workout routine again; for the moment the farm work was so exhausting that he could barely imagine adding a three mile run to his evenings. He walked for the better part of an hour, growing increasingly delighted with what he found.

The Cindersap wood was absolutely teeming with forageable plants. Horseradish, wild leeks, flowers and dandelions - not to mention the occasional fruiting tree. There were salmonberry and blackberry bushes scattered here and there, though they were not yet in season.

As the woods grew darker and deeper, Stiles found himself filled with a curious sensation. It felt as though he were moving through water - there was a shimmering quality of resistance to the air, the tell-tale tingle of magical energy.

Stiles smiled to himself at the strength of it. He couldn’t begin to guess if the natural surroundings of Stardew Valley amplified the magical currents, of if they ley lines were just closer to the surface here than they had been back in the city; either way, his spark was swelling within his chest, responding to the tingling energy all around them. 

Closing his eyes, Stiles let his second sight spill forth, reconstructing the world around him in blurry impressions and strokes of magic, varying in hue based on the intensity of the power and energy. It was a simple matter to orient himself towards the invisible center of the magical web. Something close to the center must have been causing the vibrations he’d felt rippling through his own farm - ripples that might affect the bugs and the grubs deep within the earth. 

“Hello,” said a voice just behind him. “Are you looking for something?”

“Jesus, fuck!” Stiles yelped with surprise, eyes flying wide. For a moment he was near-blinded by the utter intensity of having both his true sight and his physical eyes open at the same time - the wash of sensory input whited out the world around him. He slapped his hand over his eye and thrust a hand out instinctively, steadying himself on the trunk of a nearby tree.

He had truly thought himself alone in the woods. It should have been impossible to sneak up on Stiles when his sight was open. And yet…

Gingerly cracking his eyes open, Stiles found himself staring at Alan Deaton, local wizard.

Seriously. _Wizard_. He had business cards and everything.

Deaton didn’t appear at all perturbed by Stiles’ jumping and flailing, so Stiles had to assume he knew exactly what he’d startled Stiles into doing. He was probably laughing on the inside. 

“What the hell, man? Warn a guy,” he swore, glaring at the stranger.

“I’m surprised you didn’t hear me coming,” the man observed. He had a frustratingly mild expression that gave away very little insight as to his opinion on the matter. 

“I was distracted,” Stiles muttered, spots still floating through his vision. “It’s been a weird morning.”

“Is that what brought you into my woods?”

“They’re not your woods,” Stiles muttered, not caring how childish it sounded. “But yes. It is. What can you tell me about this?” 

He shoved a hand into his gunny sack and fished out the little container he’d dropped the grub into. For a moment he considered disappearing the container and dropping a straight-up slimy grub into Deaton’s outstretched hand, but there was a chance the creature would get dropped or squashed, and Stiles wanted answers too badly to risk his only piece of evidence.

Instead he dropped the glass container into Deaton’s palms. “I found this chomping on my vegetables this morning,” he said, by way of explanation. “It’s been gnawing on root systems and generally wreaking havoc on my garden.

“Interesting,” Deaton observed, just as Stiles had thought he would. “Is this the only one you’ve seen?”

Stiles nodded. “I noticed that a few plants were needing a magical pick-me-up in the mornings, but this morning I - heh - dug a little deeper and turned that up. It looks like it’s been magically mutated to me.”

“That is one possibility,” Deaton agreed, squinting at the specimen thoughtfully. “Or it could have ingested some kind of toxin, magical or otherwise. Those deformities do not look congenital.”

“So you’re saying tainted water or soil?” Stiles frowned. “I water my crops from the same well that provides the bathwater in the house. I think I would have noticed a contaminant there given that I've been drinking it for the better part of a week.” He paused. "It hasn't affected any of my rituals, either. You'd think unclean water would create some type of magical feedback during a working.

“Possibly. You being much larger than this little fellow it would take longer to create manifest changes in your physical body,” Deaton pointed out.

“Talking to you is always so uplifting,” Stiles muttered, rolling his eyes. “I’ll run some tests on the groundwater then, look for magical pollutants. Or - you know. Real pollutants. Can you think of anything else? If magical impurities are affected the wildlife, where are they coming from?”

“That is difficult to say,” Deaton shrugged and handed the container back to Stiles. “There are plenty of possibilities, though some are more likely than others.”

Stiles waited, eyebrows lifted, but Deaton didn’t appear keen to share any additional details. He sighed. Deaton certainly wasn’t the first practitioner he’d known who was reluctant to spill his information or research - given how long sparks and the like lived, he might have been accumulating information since Stiles’ great-grandfather’s time. Still, it was beyond frustrating to know there were more answers to be had and they were being held just out of reach.

He hesitated before he took the outstretched jar. “Do you want to keep this one and run some tests on it?”

“It will be of limited use without a healthy grub for comparison,” Deaton said, shrugging. “Bring me one of each and then we can devise a series of questions about it.”

Stiles took the jar, dissatisfied. “I look forward to the day you finally, begrudgingly, trust me.” 

“You’ve only been here a week,” Deaton observed, a vague smile on his lips. “Consider it an object lesson in the importance of patience.”

“Luckily for you, my patience is far outstripped by my stubbornness,” Stiles said with a smirk. "I can wait."

•○•

**...:Year 1, Spring 6:…**

•○•

The night of the full moon found Stiles in the middle of his parsnip field and shouting his favorite cheesy dad-pun at the sky.

“I’m like a farmer,” he yelled gleefully, throwing his skyward in victory, “Outstanding in my field!”

Crickets chirped, cicadas hummed - but the farmlands surrounding him felt utterly unimpressed.

"No appreciation for genius these days," Stiles muttered to himself, grinning at his surroundings affectionately.

Stiles had spent the last few weeks considering what groundwork he would need to put into place if the farm was going to grow successful once again. He’d done a basic cleansing upon his arrival, sweeping the cabin and the outskirts of the farm with sage. Not enough to banish any happy spirits or useful beings - he wasn’t a monster, after all - but enough to ensure that his workspace was clean on a metaphysical level.

With that blank page before him he laid out his tools in even lines - five candles, a charcoal smudge-stick, a small silver cup, incense. Stiles cast a circle with hardly a thought, raising his hands and murmuring incantations until the wind flared around him, ruffling affectionately through his hair.

That done he stretched his arms out, grounding himself and letting his senses extend into the earth. He could feel living creatures all around him - more than just the neat rows of crops and the grubs hiding beneath them. The world around him was spotted with tiny little flares of energy, galaxies within the soil and the bark of trees.

That was good, generally. Life was good. Whatever was contaminating the grub population wasn’t strong enough to snuff out life outright.

Off to the south he could feel the noisy thrum of the forest. There were enough insects and rodents within to feed an army of predators - owls, foxes, badgers. 

And… and something else.

It was only great surprise that kept Stiles’ eyes closed as a howl reverberated through the earth beneath his hands, through his breastbone and skull. “Wolves,” he whispered in surprise.

Stiles bit his lip as the howl sounded again, feeling closer than before. If these were ordinary wolves they were a danger to the imagined grazing animals he planned to purchase that summer. If they were more than that - well. He would need to ward his property either way.

The town off to his left was metaphysically quiet. The developed land had been stripped of its vibrant under-layer. Stiles could feel the energy of the town’s human population, each life floating in the dark like a firefly on a summer breeze - along with their attendant dogs, cats, mice, birds, guinea pigs, etc, etc. It felt safe and comfortable, tingling against Stiles’ senses as though they were comrades in arms, old friends. He wondered if his aura felt like that of the grandfather he’d barely known.

It seemed unlikely, really.

That thought made him wonder if his grandpa had been a spark. It wasn’t unlikely; but surely his father would have mentioned a family history once Stiles started accidentally blowing out lightbulbs every time he lost his temper. Mitch might not have been an awakened spark - there was always the possibility he'd been working his magic into the soil without ever realizing it was happening. If that was true, though, his magical signature had long since evaporated.

That thought made Stiles briefly sad, and the candles around him flickered. His circle, forever attuned to his emotional state, rippling along with his distraction.

Focus, he told himself. Focus.

He reached out again, past the town and the northward fork of the river lay something that read to Stiles’ sight as gray dead space. It was wide and blurry and dead, and connected to the highway beyond by an obnoxiously wide stretch of driveway. He hadn’t ventured that far past town yet, but he recognized the shape of it from his time in the city - someplace developed, but not occupied. Perhaps a quarry or trainyard - though either of those should have had their fair share of hitchhiking animal life. He marked it on his mental map for further investigation. It didn’t feel powerful in the way the woods did, or toxic in the way the grub had felt - but it was an anomaly out here in the densely biodiverse valley.

Stiles didn’t like anomalies as a general rule.

To the north of both the town and his own little farm lay the rolling hills and mountains; Stiles could feel caves teeming with bats and birds, giving way to the deep shafts of lifeless mines that struck out into the heart of the mountain. There were homes here and there, small and unnoticeable save one. Stiles reached out without thinking, feeling the warm sizzle of something that felt suspiciously like dedicated magical wards. He instinctively reached out for the warmth of magical power; most wards had a sort of magical signature to them, and the more creative and powerful mages Stiles knew had a habit of building in little handshakes into their work, a humble wave to any practitioners who gave them a passing inspection. He felt certain that these must be Deaton’s work - Stiles had yet to sense any other sparks in town - and he wondered how the man signed his magical workings.

He probed the wards outright and his entire world dissolved into agony.

Stiles jerked backwards with his circle, falling hard onto one elbow and yelping as physical pain joined his mental suffering. His flailing left foot barely missed a candle before he got his body under control, gritting his teeth against the iron-hot-poker-burn of the unfriendly wards.

“Fuck,” he hissed, clapping his hands over his eyes and clutching at his head. The pressure did little to stem the agonized tide of pain flooding through him - though it bled away much more slowly than it came. “Some fucking handshake,” he muttered at himself, both furious and flabbergasted at the power behind the wards.

It felt like a warning shot. A metaphysical middle finger. A “fuck with us and we fuck right back” that Stiles could read loud and clear.

Stiles instinctively drew his sight in close, cradling it against himself like a bruised elbow. The flash of hot pain faded away and was replaced with a thrumming headache that would make working any further spells that night a righteous pain in the ass. 

Shit, this was what he got for being nosy - he knew better than to prod at other people’s ward systems. He’d gotten lazy, too used to the strict statutes of the city, which allowed only nonviolent magical protections within the city limits. It was the fucking wild wild west out here, and anything went. Even a child knew that a fire burned hot, and yet here Stiles was, sticking his hand right into the flames.

Gathering up the shreds of his dignity and concentration, Stiles turned his abilities on the task at hand - the real reason he was up at one in the morning casting circles beneath the moon. Full moons were a time of fertility, fruit, and power. He was going to spell these damned fields and then fall into bed and sleep off the magic-induced hangover he felt sure was in his near future.

“Ground of my father, Noah, grow,” he intoned in a whisper, spreading his hands and urging his gun-shy spark to warm again despite the metaphysical beatdown they’d just experienced. “Ground of my grandfather, Mieczyslaw, grow.”

The wind swirled through his hair, rustling the leaves of the oaks that flanked the house. That wasn’t enough, he sensed. The land recognized the names, the blood family, and connected it with the years of labor poured into the surroundings. And yet…

“Ground of my grandmother, Alice, grow,” he whispered.

The flare of the candles flickered against his eyelids as the wind let out a sigh of satisfaction. Trees creaked and stretched their branches, the vegetables roots drove deeper in search of water. _There._

A smile spread across Stiles’ face and he dropped his sight completely, opened his eyes.

For the second time that day, Stiles fell back into the dirt with an indignant squawk.

There, at the center of his circle, was a little green globe. It was about the size of a softball and had a strange set of flagella-like appendages sticking out at either side. It curved up towards Stiles and a pair of eyes appeared in its surface, beady and black and weirdly opaque despite the shimmering translucence of the jelly-like globe’s surface.

Stiles’ heart was pounding, and yet he sensed no ill-will from the being. Its magical aura was warm and lively, non-threatening in the way a geranium or a tomato plant was non-threatening. Though it looked nothing like any sprite he’d ever seen before, Stiles instantly knew that was what it was - a forest sprite, likely drawn out by his little fertility spell.

“Hello,” he whispered.

The little jelly-like spirit wiggled back and forth almost hypnotically, and Stiles found himself lost in the flash of candlelight highlights across its moonlit surface. As it swayed, he felt its intentions brush against his mind.

H e l l o s t r a n g e r

H o w l o n e l y t h e f o r e s t h a s b e e n 

T h e w o l v e s c r y 

T h e t r e e d i e s

H o w l o n e l y t h e f o r e s t h a s b e e n 

The visions that joined its words were fragments of the past. Stiles saw a young mole-spattered man wearing dirty brown overalls, and a woman dressed all in green, curled in a bed of buttercups at the center of a forest glade. He saw huge saws eating through tree trunks, a strange floating marker full of bright and glittering treasures, heard the clink of stones fracturing and the soft-slow rustle of leaves unfurling and drinking in their first taste of sunlight.

He heard wolves howling, paws crunching across leaves and pine-needles, and then -

The world went fuzzy-white behind Stiles’ eyelids, as white as the pulsing moon overhead.

Stiles woke up sprawled across the ruined line of his circle, the candles extinguished and water spilled. The incense had burned down to a nub of black charcoal.

There was dirt beneath his nails.

“That was not how I expected this night to go,” Stiles muttered to himself, sitting up and glancing overhead at the moon. It had shifted towards the east, though not substantially. It was probably a few hours after midnight.

Stiles stood and gathered up his candles, book, and bell. He could imagine what kinds of rumors might start if Derek showed up to pick up his parsnips and found supernatural paraphernalia scattered across the front garden.

God - there was so much to think about. The vision, the wards, the looming gray off to the east. Stiles’ mind continued to drift back to the image of the woman in what he could only think of as a fairy bower, dewdrops in her hair. Was she out there somewhere in the forest? Did she need help?

Woodland sprites, though, were hardly reliable sources of information. Their concept of time was skewed and they could be showing him images from two days ago or twenty years ago. The man in overalls, at least, was identifiable. For a moment Stiles had thought it was himself - but he’d never owned a pair of overalls in his life, and the moles were all wrong. Still, there was a resemblance there, and he’d invoked the name of his grandfather in the casting of his spell.

It had to be Grandpa Stilinski.

There had been a warmth to the image that made Stiles smile. The sprites had liked his grandfather. Stiles had always felt the same - but he was a little biased, given that Mitch was family. It was oddly comforting to know that his grandfather had puttered his way through life completely unaware of the supernatural world and yet quietly appreciated by the spirits of the land.

As he traipsed up the creaky steps of the front porch, a final long, lonely howl echoed across the woods, bouncing against the rocky mountains and reverberating in the night air. Stiles shivered. “How lonely the forest has been,” he whispered, finding no meaning in the words beyond the obvious.

The forest was lonely, and so were the wolves. So much for his simple life...

•○•


	3. Chapter 3

•○•

**...:Year 1, Spring 7:…**

•○•

The next afternoon found Stiles exploring the woodsy path that jutted out from his farm to the north. He followed its meandering route, enjoying the sunshine that filtered through the new leaves overhead. There was foraging to be done, too - roots and berries, flowers, leaves, anything that might be useful in his amateur spellwork practice.

He thought long and hard about the visions of the day before. He half-expected to find forest sprites around every corner, doing their best Princess Mononoke impression - but the forest and mountain paths looked no different than they had the day before, or the day before that.

Coming out into a clearing Stiles picked his way around what looked like a tremendous landslide and laid eyes on a building set out in a neat, square clearing. He rounded the yard and was surprised to see a telescope standing out on the patio, and to see interesting plumes of multicolored smoke filtering up through the chimneys.

There were enough useful items in his backpack that he figured he would stop in and say hello; maybe offer a few gifts and try to pave the way for future friendship. Just before his knuckels rapped against the door he noticed a small posted list of opening hours - this wasn’t just a home, it was a store as well.

With that in mind he pushed the door open. A bell overhead jingled, and a middle-aged, woman with red hair and a tan scrambled to her feet and knocked a book to the floor in the process. Stiles suspected she’d been dozing off in the high chair perched behind the counter.

“Hi there,” the woman called, smiling sheepishly at him. “Sorry about that. It’s always slow on Tuesdays.”

“Oh yeah?” Stiles asked, looking around. “I - uh, well, I hate to say it, but I have absolutely no idea what you guys sell. I’m Stiles Stilinski,” he added. The rockstar feeling of being the only new guy in a small town still hadn’t worn off.

“Oh!” The woman exclaimed, beaming suddenly at him. “Brilliant! Welcome, Stiles. I’m Robin - your local carpenter and construction expert.” she came around from behind the counter and shook his hand vigorously. Her palm was tough with callouses, and his spark wiggled with pleasure at the touch - it sensed a hardworking, kind nature.

“I had a feeling I’d be seeing you sooner or later,” Robin confessed with a conspiratorial gleam in her eye.

Stiles grinned back. “That figures - you must have seen my house, lately. I have a long list of things that need carpenting,” he told her sheepishly. “I’m lucky those front steps haven’t caved in and killed me yet.”

Robin laughed. “You’re probably okay on the steps - Derek patched those up for Mitch the summer before he passed. But I can’t vouch for your porch itself.”

“Wait - _Derek_ patched up my grandpa’s steps?” Stiles blurted, shocked. “He’s no carpenter.”

“Thank goodness for that - I’d never be able to compete,” Robin confided with a grin. “He’d take that shirt off, swing a hammer, and every client I’ve ever had would be throwing their money at him. Carpentry _and_ a show!”

Stiles flushed. “I just didn’t realize he knew much about construction. Or, well. My grandpa.”

“Ah,” Robin said wisely. “Well, Derek is full of surprises... You know, if we’re going to sit here gabbing, let me make a cup of tea. I obviously need a little help staying awake this afternoon.”

Robin’s home was … well, in a word, incongruous. The entryway was all warm wood panels and classic art, combined with nature scenes and what looked like an antique spinning wheel tucked away in one corner. As Stiles followed her into the home proper he found himself standing at the mouth of what could only be called a laboratory. The walls were white and lined with metal tables and benches, gas fixtures protruding every few feet. The surface was cluttered with bunsen burners, petri dishes, microscopes, and samples of stone. The floor was modern tile and even had drains set into it at even intervals - the entire effect was eerily similar to his freshman chem lab.

“What…” Stiles began, mouth hanging open in shock. This was the last thing he’d expected to see inside a quaint woodland cottage in the foothills of Stardew Valley.

“Oh!” Robin said, cheerfully. “That’s the Beacon Valley Natural Resources Laboratory. Looks great, right? I built it for my husband a few years back. Dimitri is a scientist - he’s got a small team and they needed a home base.”

“You built this?” Stiles asked, impressed. He wasn’t exactly a construction connoisseur, but the lab was clearly built to an exacting technical standard. “It’s amazing!”

“Thanks,” Robin said, before she began to walk again. They walked past a staircase into the basement and a few closed doors before reaching the kitchen at the back of the house. Robin reached out and weighed the kettle with a hand. Deciding it needed to be topped up, she did so and then turned the gas on. She began to talk as she busied herself pulling out a tin of biscuits and a bowl of fruit. “So, Stiles. Tell me about yourself. Enquiring minds want to know!”

“Who’s inquiring?” Stiles teased, feeling instinctively at ease in the cozy surroundings. “There’s really not much to tell. I graduated a few years ago. Planned to do something cool and remote like programming, but found a job in the city and… it didn’t quite work out.”

“My son’s a programmer,” Robin said, pleased. “His name is Sebastian - if he’s around I’ll introduce you before you head home. He works as a freelancer out of the basement. He enjoys it, though I wish he’d get out more. Did you want green or black or herbal?”

“Black please. So …. construction company, lab, and programming studio - you’ve got a busy family,” Stiles observed, impressed.

“Very! So, you programmed for a while, then threw it all away for the life of an agrarian luddite?” The kettle began to whistle and Robin quieted it immediately, filling a teapot with black tea bags and dropping it onto the table. A second trip to the fridge produced milk and sugar, and then Robin dropped into the seat opposite of him and wrapped her hands around her empty cup, waiting patiently for the tea to steep.

“We put the farm up for sale when I went off to college,” Stiles said, shrugging slightly. “Obviously it didn’t sell in time to help me pay the bills. But I graduated, found a great job,” he took a deep breath and plowed forward, “met a guy, started building a life. To make a long story short, the breakup was bad and you should _never_ date your coworkers, because it makes retaining your position kind of a challenge.”

It also didn’t help if your ex was the head of your coven and had enough magical pull to banish you all the way into the next state. Cheating bastard.

Robin whistled long and low. Stiles was relieved that revealing the gender of his ex hadn’t garnered any noticeable response; you just never knew with small town folks. “That’s a tough row to hoe,” she said, solemnly.

“Yeah, well. Lesson learned,” Stiles said, attempting a nonchalant shrug.

“You know,” Robin said thoughtfully. “Sebastian is single. I’m not sure he’s given much thought to the men in town, but you seem like a nice boy. Maybe you’d light a fire under his--”

Stiles choked on his tea.

A voice behind Stiles broke in, cutting through Robin’s hysterical laughter and Stiles’ embarrassed sputtering. “Robin, are you propositioning the new guy?”

“I want him to feel welcome!” Robin exclaimed, her face a picture of innocence. Stiles turned on his seat and then froze in place, his embarrassment magnifying a thousand times over at the sight of an _incredibly gorgeous strawberry blonde goddess_ standing in the doorway. Sure, she might be wearing a long lab coat and dirty white scrubs, but _damn_ could she ever rock a pair of plexiglass safety goggles.

“I, uh, I feel … very…” Stiles started, trailing off and wincing.

“Clearly,” Lydia said, dropping her hands to her hips. “I’m Lydia Martin. You must be Stiles Stilinski. Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you,” Stiles said weakly, offering her a hand and then hesitating, pulling it back and wiping the remnants of his splattered tea off onto his jeans. Lydia arched a perfect brow at him, managing to look both judgemental and disinterested at the same time.

“Lydia is my husband’s lab assistant,” Robin told him. “She’s working on her post-doctorate in the city, but spends most of her semesters out here.”

“I grew up in Stardew Valley,” Lydia said, face softening slightly. “There’s really no place like it in the world. I’m just lucky that there are enough geological aberrations in this region to feed my research.”

Stiles perked up at that. He thought of the gray grubs infesting his fields and squinted thoughtfully at Lydia. “What kind of aberrations?” 

“Unnaturally large ore veins, far more gemstones than average, traces of unstable iridium… why?” She trailed off, studying his expression curiously.

“I’m… just interested in the natural world, that’s all.”

“You just said you were a programmer,” Lydia observed, smirking.

“A programmer _and_ a farmer,” Stiles protested. “I have hidden depths, Miss Martin. I saw what looked like a landslide at the top of the clearing. Is this area seismically active?”

Robin shook her head at that. “That landslide was good old fashioned washout, I’m afraid. It’s blocked off the rail depot and the hot springs, though they’re saying it will be cleared by summer.

“We’re not particularly prone to earthquakes,” Lydia told him, “But they do happen on occasion. They’ll start happening more and more often if Joja Energy manages to push their fracking bills through.”

“Joja Energy? As in, Joja Mart?”

“One and the same,” Robin said, sighing. “It’s a big franchise operation, and they’ve got their fingers in a looooot of pies. The local conglomerate is run by the Argents up the road. They’re developing the valley like it’s going out of style.”

“I had no idea there was more to them than crummy corner stores,” Stiles admitted, reluctantly. “But…. at least the shops are convenient?”

Both Lydia and Robin made disgusted noises at him. 

“Kidding! Kidding! I’m a local business now, I would never shop at Joja Mart.”

That, at least, earned a reprieve from Robin’s judgemental stare. Her face went soft and wistful. “I’m glad to hear you say that, Stiles. To be honest, you picked a tough time to move into town - times have been tight since the Argents signed up with Joja mart. If we don’t all work together and shop local, the Argents are going to drive us _all_ out of business - including that lovely old farm of yours.”

“Well, we can’t have that,” Stiles said, sipping at what was left of his tea. “I’m just getting started.”

•○•

The parsnips, unsurprisingly, sold well. Two short days later Derek found himself back on the Stilinski farm, peeling bills off the wad of cash in his back pocket and pressing them into Stiles’ warm, dirty hands.

Stiles immediately began to babble about his plans for the money, and Derek tuned him out silently, pulling his shipping ledger out of his back pocket and producing a handheld weigh-scale. He hooked the scale’s metal teeth into the bags and weighed each one before loading them into the small trailer he towed behind his motorcycle. 

Stiles helped load them, grimacing as he lifted.

“Farming is hard work,” he told Derek. “I hurt in places I didn’t know I could hurt.”

Derek rolled his eyes, watching carefully as Stiles settled the parsnips in next to three bales of feed and bags of baby kale. The kid was careful, at least – nobody needed bruised parsnips in their lives.

“…I nearly languished in bed all day, unable to stand on my own…”

Despite his best efforts to remain silent and standoffish, Derek found himself opening his mouth as he jotted tallies down in his ledger. “If the spa was still open you could go for a soak.”

Stiles’ face lit up at the simple acknowledgement – how could any one person be so damn sunny all the time? “The spa?” he prompted. “There’s a _spa_?”

Derek made one final notation and stuck the ledger back into this pocket. “We used to have a communal hot spring bath north of Robin and Demetrius’ place. There was an avalanche last fall, though, and the springs have been blocked since.”

“Oh,” Stiles said, clearly disappointed. “So that would be… north of town? Sort of northwest-ish?”

“Yeah,” Derek agreed. It was a pity – he’d loved the feel of a hot bath after a long day’s work. “There’s a path over the mountains there, as well as the local rail depot. Everyone’s hoping it gets cleared out before summer or we won’t have half as many tourists coming out to use the beaches.”

Stiles grinned. “So… if the spa is off the table and it’s still too cold for beach-life, what do you guys do for fun around here?”

Derek considered that. He usually sat around playing Scrabble and Settlers of Catan with Laura and Peter, but that was the least-cool answer he could think of. “There’s… there’s always the saloon” he said, shrugging.

•○•

In retrospect, telling Stiles about the saloon had been a terrible idea. It had been hard enough to avoid the kid when his mother forced him to do shipping runs – but now Stiles seemed to be everywhere. He bought supplies at the shop, loitered around the smithy to chat with Clint – Derek even ran into him once down on rocky seashore, where he was picking up lumps of coral and soft, spiny sea urchins to sell in Willy’s seaside shop.

Derek was seated in the corner of the saloon with Erica and Isaac when Stilinski came stomping in. The day was a rainy one, and Derek’s boots were still soaked through with mud after his run to pick up early spring harvests and transport them to the shop. Stiles looked smaller with his dark hair plastered to his forehead and an enormous oversized coat wrapped around his shoulders. It was so long in fact that he rolled the sleeves up to his elbows to reveal slender wrists and hands covered in band-aids.

Derek swallowed tightly and took a judicious sip of his beer, steeling himself for what was certain to be an awkward conversation.

“Hey Stiles,” Erica called, cheerful. Stiles’ face lit up at the sight of her and he waved happily. 

“Hey Erica,” he chirped.

Erica flashed Derek a wicked look. “Want to join us?”

Stiles grinned. “ Maybe in a minute - I’m supposed to play pool with Sebastian,” he told her. Then he glanced around the room with a faint frown on his face. “There _is_ a pool table in this joint, right?”

Erica gestured to the doorway behind her. It led into a secondary room with a few pinball machines, ancient video games, a couch and a full-sized pool-table. Derek still held the high score on one of the pinball machines, though Sebastian had claimed the number one slot on most of the other games.

Derek hadn’t realized that Stiles knew Sebastian and his gang of two. He usually ran around with Abigail, pale and purple-haired and overly fond of crystals and sage, and a kid named Sam. Sam was about as small-town bland as it was possible to be, even down to the mediocre guitar skills and dreams of becoming the next Fall Out Boy. They were younger than Derek but older than Cora, and most of what Derek knew about them came from Lydia, who worked with Sebastian’s step-father at the labs north of town.

Sebastian had never been very friendly towards Derek; the kid always smelled like cigarettes and motor oil, and worked as a programmer. His odd hours meant that Derek rarely saw him out and about, being social.

Maybe that was why he was so annoyed to see Sebastian saunter over to the bar and chat easily with Stiles while Gus fixed him a drink. Stiles ordered something in an obnoxious shade of pink while Sebastian picked up three beers, which Stiles helped him carry.

As the pair drifted into the back room Stiles glanced over at Derek and flashed him a grin. “Good call on the saloon,” he said cheerfully. “My new mission in life is to unseat this guy from the top score on Space Invaders.”

“You wish,” Sebastian scoffed. 

“I used to have the high score on Pinball Wizard,” Derek said affably. “Let me know if you need lessons.”

Stiles laughed. “No thanks, man. I’ll take Space Invaders any day.”

Sebastian glanced back at Stiles. “Have you played Chrono Trigger?”

“Ummmm hello, who hasn’t? That’s a freaking classic.”

Derek hadn’t. He let Stiles and Sebastian retreat to the back room,frowning.

•○•

**...:Year 1, Spring 15:…**

•○•

Derek secretly loved the flower dance. It wasn’t that he enjoyed standing up and making a fool of himself during the dance itself, but there was something about the yearly festival, the way older couples in town held hands and watched the younger generation perform the traditional steps, that made him feel warm and welcome inside. Stardew Valley was his home, after all, and part of what made it _home_ was the shared traditions, year in and year out, even if they were embarrassing or awkward by modern standards. Five generations of Hales had danced that dance – watching from the sidelines gave Derek a visceral, bone-deep feeling of belonging.

Stardew Valley was a small town, and like most small towns, its dating pool was painfully limited. It was even more limited for the Hales than most people, seeing as they – along with their cousins - made up a full ten percent of the total population of their tiny rural high school.

Most folks who grew up in the Valley made a quick post-graduation escape. Some came back – Lydia Martin, for example, returned after graduation to work with Demetrius on the Valley’s unique iridium deposits. Boyd had returned as well, doing a technical degree and then returning to work with Clint in the Smithy on the other side of town. But most of them – Jackson, Paige, Kira – went out into the wide world, popping up for the holiday season and not much else.

Laura and Cora often lamented their prospects, and Derek had danced with one of his sisters at every Flower Dance since … since his last breakup. Even so, Derek was happy with his own company, and had never really minded the shallow dating pool. Work at the family store kept him busy, and while he’d done a few business courses at the community college past the Desert Oasis, he’d thrown in the towel early on and without meeting anyone date-worthy.

Which is why, when it comes time to pick a partner and dance the traditional couples dance of the day, he is absolutely not annoyed in any way that Stiles stands up with Erica.

He swallowed down the rest of his rose-lemonade and tossed the plastic cup into a recycling bin. “You and me again, Cor--”

His sister, however, was nowhere to be found. “Cora?” Derek blinked. She’d been there only a moment ago. Had he been so lost in thought that he hadn’t noticed her slip away?

He looked left, then right, then spotted his sister across the field - one hand tucked into Lydia Martin’s slender, pale elbow.

Derek’s jaw dropped and he found himself squinting suspiciously at the pair of them. Lydia smiling at Cora through thick dark lashes, his baby sister looking back with cheeks as pink as the blossoms that lined the trees behind them. Somehow, he didn’t think this was a friendly dance. 

It wasn’t all that surprising that someone had agreed to dance with his baby sister. It was a bit more surprising that that someone was Lydia. She and Cora curtsied their way down the line, changing partners when the dance required it with neatly practiced steps.

Derek wasn’t the only one who had noticed their baby sister’s dance partner. Laura appeared at his elbow with two bottles of soda in hand, passing Derek a drink and toasting him cheerfully.

“To growing up,” Laura said as their bottles clinked together. “Cora Hale is ready to take on the world.”

“Lydia’s a bit old for her,” Derek grumbled, a wave of protective instinct washing through him.

“Only a year,” Laura said, shrugging.

“What?” Derek blinked. “How is that--” 

“She started university at thirteen,” Laura told him, watching Lydia and Cora spin in neat circles. Cora was smiling brightly, clearly pleased as punch with her choice in partners. “Her work with Demetrius is for her doctoral thesis.”

“Hm,” Derek muttered, studying Lydia with a bit more thought. Not too old, then. And smart. And employed. It was difficult to find things to complain about with Lydia.

When he thought about it, she did crop up at the shop and linger, chatting with Cora over the countertop on a semi-regular basis and showing her samples of crystals and plants she’d been gathering in the woods. Derek had thought they were friends, but it was possible he’d misread those evening visits entirely. 

He sighed, “Well, at least she has good taste in dance partners.”

“Amen,” Laura said, giggling.

Stiles, for his part, obviously didn’t know the dance. He’d gone beet-red opposite Erica, moving in the wrong direction at almost every reverse or turn. Alex and Hayley glared in turn, trying to give him as wide a berth as possible without breaking the lines of the dance. Stiles didn’t know it, but stomping on Hayley’s toes would earn him an enemy for life. Jesus, did the kid have no sense of self-preservation? Did he enjoy humiliating himself in public?

Finally Cora - obviously tired of Stiles’ flailing elbows - leaned in and began to count out the measures for him. Stiles relaxed slightly and flashed her a grateful smile, resetting his gait and finding the beat again..

Lydia made some remark too quiet for Derek to pick out amongst the crowd, and then they were all laughing, Erica beaming as Stiles stepped in and spun her correctly for the first time. By the end of the last repetition he’d managed a perfect execution of steps and threw his arms up in the air triumphantly.

When the second dance began it was Elliot who tapped Stiles on the shoulder and cordially invited him to dance. _That_ surprised Derek - there weren’t that many same-sex couples in Beacon Hills, and Elliot was most often seen in Robin’s company. Robin, though, was chatting cheerily with Robin and didn’t seem at all perturbed that her friend was standing up with another man. 

Elliot took his place in the women’s row so that Stiles wouldn’t have to re-learn the steps in reverse - he stood a good four inches taller than any of the other dancers on his line, which meant Derek had a disconcertingly good view of the flirty expression on his face as he let Stiles lead the way.

Erica returned to the sidelines, cheeks flush with exertion. "You should dance, Derek!" She said, cheerfully. "I'll stand up with you if you like. Maybe you could get in a few steps with -" 

"Erica, please don't make this a _thing_."

She laughed. "Oh, Derek. It's way too late for that. This is _definitely_ a thing."

Groaning, Derek turned his back Erica and the dance floor alike, bee-lining for the drink stand. He'd just have to find a floral arrangement to hide behind until this mortifying day was over.

•○•

As the spring wore on, Stiles developed a habit. A very particular habit. A very particular, very annoying habit. 

Every morning Derek walked from the Hale House in the woods, past the Wizard’s tower and along the river beneath the shady, overhanging branches of oak and pine. Every day he crossed into the southern fields of the Stilinski farm and noted, with grudging admiration, the amount of work Stiles had put in the previous day. At first it was impossible to miss – he cleared trees, stones, burned brush and carefully prepared the fertile earth for the summer sowing season. As the weeks went on, though, the changes grew more subtle. His fence-building methods improved until he’d actually managed a fair-sized enclosure, encircling a small spring-fed pond just south of the main gate. Then, within the newly-made pasture, and a roped-off area that looks like the footprint of a foundation. 

Derek headed straight to the shipping crate and glanced in. Stiles' shipments were rarely so large as to require the bike – normally he managed two or three ten pound bags that Derek could easily carry the rest of the way to the shop. 

Today’s harvest was kale - it smelled good, healthy, and organic. Derek smiled to himself, recalling the seeds he'd spent the winter bagging dutifully. He loved this part of farming – the pure, deep satisfaction of growing something, of planting a seed and watching it fruit. He made a mental note to bag some kale for the Hale family dinner that night.

“What do you think?” Stiles asked, making Derek jerk with surprise. 

“It looks good,” he said, as he always did. “We’ll have to give it a taste test. The real telling’s in the taste.”

Stiles smiled. “Say, I – I was in the woods yesterday evening, and I came across a patch of leeks. I figured they’d be all pulled by now, seeing as summer is almost here, but… why don’t you take a few home for the family?”

Derek blinked as Stiles thrust a bundle of leeks into his arms. Laura loved leeks, Cora hated them, and Derek was – as per usual – somewhere in the middle. “Thanks, I – guess. Thanks,” he said neutrally. “Laura loves these, I’m surprised there was a single stalk left in the entire forest.”

Stiles deflated slightly at his reaction. “You’re not a fan?”

“They’re alright,” Derek said

“Share them with the family, then,” Stiles said with a shrug, thrusting the leeks at Derek and returning to work.

Two days later, the leeks had been swapped for a bundle of fresh kale, set aside and carefully washed. “That one’s on the house,” Stiles told Derek.

“It looks nice,” Derek said, suspiciously. Business was bad at the shop, but surely it wasn’t so bad as to warrant hand-outs from local farmers. Or was this just Stiles trying to be a good neighbor? Maybe trying to get into Talia’s good books? He realized that he’d been staring at the leafy green veg, so he tore his eyes away and forced himself to smile. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” said Stiles, and went back to work.

The gifts starting coming once, maybe twice a week as the season crept on. Sometimes it was something fresh picked from the woods – spiceberries or fiddlehead fern – and once Stiles took to fishing, he occasionally gifted a share of his morning catch. The staked-out space near the front gate grew into a chicken coop with one lonely-looking hen, and Stiles – with unmistakable pride – offered Derek three of her small brown eggs.

"Her name is Princess Lay-a," Stiles announced proudly, handing Derek the half-empty carton and waggling his eyebrows enthusiastically. "Get it? _Lay_ -a?" 

It was all Derek could do to shake his head and smother his smile.

He didn’t have the heart to tell Stiles that Laura kept thirty-two hens - or that most of the eggs stocked at Hale Family General were produced in his own backyard.

The gifts were definitely an was an annoying habit. Even more annoying - they were growing on Derek.

•○•

**...:Year 1, Spring 25:…**

•○•

It took nearly a season for Stiles to venture as far east as the Joja Mart. He wasn’t exactly avoiding the place - but he bought everything he needed in town, and there never seemed to be enough hours in the day to get his farm chores done.

He was quickly learning to appreciate a good rainy day; any morning on which Stiles woke up to the soft shh-shh-shh of rain against his bedroom windows was a gift. He allowed himself to be lazy - rolling out of bed and taking the time to whip up a cup of crummy instant coffee before settling down into his grandfather’s creaky rocker out on the front porch. From there he had a good view of the nearby fields - he liked to sit there in the rainy hush, opening up his sixth sense and watching his plants glow with pleasure at the gift of pure, fresh water.

Summer was only a few days away. Stiles had spent the better part of the spring clearing away the excess brush and brambles, cutting down trees for firewood and digging up a truly staggering number of stones that had infiltrated his grandfather’s once-fertile fields. The trees and grasses he could understand - but the stones? Where the hell had they come from?

On that particular rainy day, Stiles made the decision to go a bit further afield. He rinsed out his coffee cup and set it in the sink, then pulled on his grandfather’s creaky plastic wellies and pulled out a waterproof coat he’d rescued from deep in the recesses of his closet. As a Spark, Stiles was perfectly capable of walking between the raindrops - but that sort of talent made people ask questions, questions Stiles wasn’t particularly keen on answering.

It was time to check out the competition and meet the infamous Argents. 

The Argents were still a mystery to Stiles. Despite being at the center of so many conversations in town, they never seemed to show their faces around town. He knew they lived up in the mountains, near the mountain lake and past the mines - but beyond that the family was a mystery, a big gaping hole in Stiles’ knowledge of the region and its residents. 

Then again - if Stiles owned his own personal superstore he doubted he’d bother going out much, either.

He decided to cross town rather than taking the mountain path and set out, stomping through puddles and enjoying the feel of warm rain on his cheeks. He moved past the bus stop, past the clinic, past the ever-tempting facade of Hale General… he needed to invest in a bicycle. Or maybe a horse? Robin had mentioned something about building a stable at a discount if he provided her with the materials…

Crossing the bridge at the far eastern edge of town, Stiles turned left and followed the edge of the river. As he did, he began to notice little things - litter, cigarette butts, a patch of oily sheen on the surface of the river. Last winter it wouldn’t have given him pause - pollution in a city was like white noise, something so omnipresent that you never bothered to notice it. Out here in Stardew Valley, though, things were different. The forrests felt pristine, the water ran clean enough to drink. 

He frowned, a leaden suspicion sinking in his chest. He hit the northernmost bridge and turned east once again at the mouth of a broad swath of paved parking lot.

He _knew_ \- he just _knew_ that this was the sickly grayness he’d felt during his full moon castings. 

The Jojamart store east of town was a bloated version of every big-box store he’d ever seen in the outskirts of his home city. Its facade was all plastic and gray-painted brick, the broad glass doors sliding open and closed as people slipped in and out again, arms dripping with plastic bags. He’d known that Joja employed a fair chunk of the town - Sam and Shane, for example - but seeing the store hunkered along the far banks of the river still made Stiles shiver inexplicably.

The parking lot was surprisingly full - clearly the Joja Mart was close to the interstate and much more convenient for anyone who lived outside of the town center. Even if the locals stood by Hale General, the old family store had to be hemorrhaging business to the new establishment.

Was there something magic about this place, or was it just the absence of life and energy that made it feel so intimidating? 

Well. There was only one way to find out.

Stiles straightened his shoulders and shifted his pack on his back, then walked resolutely into Joja Mart.

As he walked inside the air around him shivered, the air-conditioning blasting a cold wave at his face and neck as he entered the building. The ceiling dripped with jarringly bright fluorescent lights, and a smiling young white woman greeted him the moment he set foot inside.

“Welcome to Joja Mart, can I help you find anything?” she asked in a saccharine tone entirely too enthusiastic for the prison-like gray interior of the store. Her blue eyes had a hardness to them that Stiles didn’t trust. Her name-tag said ‘HI, I’M KATE’ in big block letters.

Stiles frowned at her. “Uh, no. I’m just looking around.” 

“Oh, is this your first time to Joja Mart? You don’t look familiar,” said Hi, I’m Kate.

“Yeah, I’m new in town,” Stiles told her weekly. God, he hated it when perky employees wouldn’t leave him alone. This was why he’d done all his shopping online back in the city - but no major carries delivered to Beacon Hills for free.

Besides - he was _investing_ in the community. That had been part of the plan - spruce up the farm, shop and sell local. He _definitely_ wasn’t going to spend any money at Joja Mart.

“You must be the new Stilinski, then,” said Hi, I’m Kate.

Stiles nearly fell over. “What?”

“I’m Kate Argent,” said Kate. “We're an old family around these parts. I live just east of the old quarry.”

“Oh,” said Stiles. “I guess I haven’t gotten that far in my exploration.”

“Haven’t you,” Kate said, smiling the sort of smile that generally made Stiles feel concerned for his well-being. She didn’t offer him her hand, and for that he was glad. Even without touching her, he knew his spark would shy away from a touch. “I heard you’ve been doing your seed-shopping down at Hale General. You know you’re being brutally overcharged, right?”

“You… you’re keeping up with my spending habits?” Stiles asked, incredulous. “I’m not sure that’s any of your business.”

“It’s a small town, Stiles. I’m surprised you haven’t figured that out yet - everyone knows everyone’s business around here.”

Stiles frowned. As far as he could tell, nobody in town spoke with the Argents if they could help it. They were never at the saloon in the evenings, and certainly never at Hale General. Was it possible that Kate Argent had used something less mundane and more supernatural to keep track of him?

Or was he just being paranoid?

“I know it’s convenient to your farm, but let me show you the kind of brilliant savings you can find at your locally-owned Joja Mart franchise.” Kate took him by the arm and half-lead, half-dragged him off towards the Home and Gardening section of the shop. “You’d be leaps and bounds ahead of where you are if you stopped paying Hale prices for your produce and seeds.”

“Joja Mart carries parsnip seeds?” Stiles asked incredulously.

“Joja Mart carries lots of things,” Kate said, sharply. “Join us, and _thrive_.”

That - was that their company motto? Jesus, that was terrifying. The Borg could learn something from the creepy hive-mind collective Kate Argent was rocking.

It turned out that Joja Mart did carry seeds. Stiles stared at the racks and racks of neatly processed, hermetically sealed seed-sacks in stunned surprise. Kate was right - each and every one undercut Talia's prices by a neat three dollars. “You -- how are these so cheap?” he asked in surprise, reaching for a bag and turning it over in his hands.

“Joja Mart is a local collective,” Kate said sweetly. “You may think of us as big business, but we buy a huge percentage of fresh produce from farmers and other small growers. Joja gives the little guy a big, big boost. Sell to us, and we can stock your product here and in another two hundred and thirty three Joja Mart franchise stores.”

“That doesn’t actually sound very local,” Stiles observed - even as a part of his brain did the math. That would be a hell of a market ... “My produce is so much better fresh. I'd hate to ship it out.”

“We treat all incoming produce with a specialized freshness-compounds, which lock in the quality you worked so hard to produce,” Kate said with great cheer.

“And _that_ doesn’t sound very fresh.” Stiles squinted suspiciously down at the bag of seeds in his hand, then set it back up on the shelf. “How long have you guys been open here in Beacon Hills?”

“We broke ground almost two years ago,” Kate said, batting her eyes at him. “Before Joja Mart shopping in the area was _so_ time-consuming. You’d either have to make the rounds to half a dozen little shops with poor selection, or you’d have to drive or bus over to the next town for the things you need. Joja has really changed the face of shopping. You can get everything you need in one spot.”

Stiles shivered. “I’m sure the community is grateful,” he muttered, turning a corner and heading back towards the door. 

“You would think that,” Kate said, frowning. If she noticed Stiles’ attempt at a subtle retreat, she said nothing. “But then again, Beacon Hills has never been very good at keeping its best interests at heart. Take for example - my family has hunted for years.”

A shiver slipped down Stiles’ spine. He paused next to a pyramid of canned peaches and gave Kate Argent a flat look. He asked her the necessary question, though he could guess her answer with confidence. “And what, exactly, do you hunt?”

“Dangerous things,” Kate answered, smiling a feral smile.

“There aren’t many dangerous things here in Beacon Hills.”

Kate’s bright blue eyes were chips of ice in her pretty face. “Not _many_ \- my family has seen to that. And I hope you intend to keep it that way,” she observed.

Stiles narrowed his eyes and then turned away, striding towards the door. He could feel his spark flaring along with his temper. “I’m not sure what you think you have to fear from a lowly farmer, Miss Argent.”

She fell in step with him again, though she felt less like a tour guide and more like a bouncer. Stiles kept his eyes forward, feeling the surprised glances of other shoppers and staff members as they moved towards the door. Sam was kneeling at a cereal end-cap, his eyes wide and surprised at the sight of Stiles. Shane was working the register, and he barely blinked as the pair of them went by, his hands scanning canned goods with mindless precision. 

“The Cindersap woods are not a friendly place,” Kate said quietly. “The denizens within may wear a human face from time to time, but you mustn’t forget those faces may not be real.”

Stiles narrowed his eyes. “I haven’t run into any trouble.” Other than the midnight howls, in fact, he hadn’t seen a single snout or wary werewolf paw. Though he supposed she could mean Deaton - and if she did, Stiles was going to have to be more careful when he was on his own. “Thanks for the warning. I suppose I should invest in some better fencing."

“And possibly a sword,” Kate suggested, smirking. 

Stiles couldn't help it - he laughed outright at the idea. “Don’t tell me your supermarket sells _medieval weaponry_ ,” he croaked, wiping at his eyes.

Kate Argent had a musical laugh - a musical laugh that was just slightly out of tune with the world around her. Her laugh made the suggestion feel substantially less entertaining. “Don’t be silly - we’d never get the permits for that. But my big brother runs a shop near the entrance of the mine, and he carries top-shelf stuff. A must-have for any adventurer.”

Stiles bit his lip. He’d heard of the mines, of course. Robin required metal bars for several of her constructions, and he’d just completed his first smelter. A rainy day like today would have been the perfect moment to head over and do some exploring, maybe find a vein of copper and put his plans for the stable, the chicken coop, and the barn in place.

“And people say we don’t support local business...” Kate finished, chuckling to herself. 

Ahhhh, nepotism at its finest. 

“Thanks for the tip,” said Stiles. “I’m going to pass on the parsnips - end of the season and all. I already purchased my summer seeds.”

“I see,” said Kate, skeptically. “So the rumors are true - you _must_ have Derek Hale wrapped around your little finger if you’ve got him selling you seeds out of season.”

“Something like that,” said Stiles. Sick of the charged conversation, he forced his legs to move again. The mechanical doors slid open with a hiss and a blast of warm dampness sliced into the super-frigid air of the massive store. “It was nice to meet you, Kate.”

Kate smiled, but didn’t step out into the rain. “Likewise, I’m sure.”

Stiles walked back to the bridge, then veered off the main walkway. The aura of Joja Mart and Kate Argent was oily and disgusting, a bit like the rainbow-sheen on the surface of the puddles. He needed to cleanse his mental palate with a walk through some place perfectly natural and clean - and even the he’d planned so sage the fuck out of these clothes before setting foot inside his house. 

He headed north, frowning at the plastic bags and human detritus that dotted this side of the river. This enormous store was a scar on the landscape - it was even poisoning the river.

The rain gave the world a muffled quality, as though his little spot by the creek was wrapped in cotton. He pulled off his raincoat and turned his face upwards, letting the rain splash across his face and neck. This far outside of town it was unlikely there would be anyone to witness him walk through the rain without staying wet.

He passed a billowy plastic bag was trapped in the branches of a low bush and paused to untangle it. He checked for holes, looped it over one arm, and began picking up litter as he walked. The physical act of cleaning the space around him was good - it lightened his mood just as the running water washed away the metaphysical garbage still tainting the edges of his aura. 

A wizard like Deaton could have cleaned the riverbank up with a snap of his fingers, but Stiles’ gifts had never been quite so black-and-white. He could move the occasional object with his mind, but disappearing something like litter was far beyond his abilities.

Besides, there was something disconcerting about making things disappear with a wish. With Stiles’ luck, he would have accidentally disappeared his ex in a moment of pique.

The river flowed from north to south, and Stiles walked upstream until he found a pair of boards stretched across a narrow point in the flow. There were muddy footprints across the makeshift bridge, and Stiles walked across with careful steps. On the other side he scrambled up a grassy verge and found himself at the bottom of Robin’s clearing. The house was silent and the chimneys were smokeless, so he paused only long enough to sneakily drop his bag of litter into her garbage can before continuing to follow the river’s course north and east.

Eventually the waterway opened up into a beautiful mountain lake. The water was clear and cold, and on the southern edge a little cluster of islands had been linked by makeshift bridges. In the rain, frogs were jumping happily amongst the reeds and rushes at the lake’s southern edge. The far side was almost invisible in the gray spring rain, but Stiles thought he could make out the mouth of a dark cave and, in the distance, a small cabin.

The cave, in particular, was an enticing prospect. Stiles picked his way around the side of the lake, boots squishing through muddy puddles and wet grass, and crossed another wooden bridge. It didn’t take long to realize that the cave mouth was man-made, its edges bearing the marks of ancient hammers. Stiles ducked into the dark interior, nose filling with the scent of damp soil and earthy mushrooms. 

Rather than let his eyes adjust to the dim interior, Stiles lifted a hand to his mouth and blew a stream of warm air into his palm. The air swirled in his cupped fingers, coalesced, and then began to shine merrily. Stiles grinned and tossed the ball up into the air, where it bobbed gently above his head, casting warm light throughout the room.

Light spells would never _not_ make him feel like Harry Potter.

In the flickering illumination Stiles could see that he stood in a chamber that was very clearly the mouth of a mine. There were old broken-down minecarts piled against the western wall, and some ancient seismic shift had partially blocked the entrance to a tunnel jutting off to the left. Straight ahead was a battered industrial elevator and a gaping hole in the floor, the top rung of a ladder just visible as it stretched down into the earth.

Stiles moved forward, mentally running through a list of spell components he might be able to find within. According to Lydia the area had an unusually high preponderance of gemstones - who knew what he might find if he went digging? He’d never had the opportunity to use crystals in his work; they had always felt a little more Hot Topic teenybopper than true hedge witch.

Even so, the idea of working a stone free from the earth and using it to ground his circles and spells was appealing. 

Moving to the edge of the hole, Stiles dropped his orb into the blackness and illuminated the level below. The light glinted off of something in the corner of the room and Stiles grinned, testing the ladder rungs briefly to be sure they’d hold his weight before he dropped down into the mine.

Just a few levels. Just to see. 

The glistening something proved to be a shimmering lump of ruddy metallic ore jutting from beneath a pile of stone. Stiles wished he’d brought a pick-axe - but settled for knocking the rock against the wall of the cave and breaking away excess dirt and stone. He ran fingers over the surface and tasted copper in the back of his mouth.

“A few more lumps like this and I can get that stable built,” he realize aloud, his voice hushed against the walls of the cave. Stiles dropped the metal lump into his bag and began hunting amongst the rubble.

He ended up exploring the top five levels of the mines, carefully avoiding any spots where the ceiling supports looked dubious. The caves weren’t empty; they were scattered with the debris of former mining operations, including tools, carts, backpacks, and old barrels full of supplies. There were mushrooms and molds growing along the floor and glistening stalactites hanging in unused corners. There was the occasional rustle of grass blades as faint wind hummed through the caverns.

Stiles been underground before - basement parking garages were a dime a dozen in the city - but it felt very different to be underground in a natural setting. His senses were tingling with the energy flowing beneath the earth’s surface - and he could sense the fragmented, fracturing gems past the walls of the cavern. They were foci even here, deep within the earth. Stiles closed his eyes and reached out, trying to sense what the lines of energy might look like. They were thick and golden, flowing down from the mountains and parting where the mines struck down into the center of the earth...

There was no sign of the strange grubs he’d been pulling out of his fields. He even went so far as to tear some of the wild cave grasses up and examine their roots for signs of the invaders; whatever was mutating the insects either wasn’t a factor up in the mountains, or wasn’t able to affect the lifeforms this deep in the cave. 

And there were definitely lifeforms around. Stiles didn’t have to slip into his second sight to know the cave wasn’t as empty and abandoned as it looked - he could feel the pulse of them when he closed his eyes. Bats, probably. Lizards. Pale blind fish occupying spring-fed pools deep in the black. Maybe even moles - did moles travel this deep in the earth?

An echo of sound pierced the blackness behind him, making Stiles freeze in place and stare into the distance. When the silence stretched out unbroken once gain, he bit his lip. “Probably just my imagination,” he muttered, taking comfort in his own voice.

He turned back to the stones he was turning over, dusting off a piece of stone that boasted a small, bright-blue gleam within. “Jackpot,” he said to himself, pocketing the rock. He’d take his finds home and pull down his grandfather’s pickaxe. If the mine was a productive as Lydia had suggested, he might be able to put together a side-hustle for himself shipping gemstones to supernatural shops in the big city. That would be a great source of income, particularly when nothing was growing in the winter...

Another sound met his ears - something slick moving over stone, rustling grass, shifting gravel. This time he was sure he wasn’t imagining it - either the sensory deprivation that came with climbing around in the dark was getting to him, or there was something in the black with him.

He wrinkled his brow as he focused on pouring a little more concentration into his floating orb of light. The glow grew steadily brighter, slowly illuminating foot after foot of the cave’s interior. Stiles turned his back on the area he’d been exploring, squinting instead into the dimness at the edge of his circle of light.

Something quivered at the far end of the cave. “What on earth...?”

A little green blob slipped forwards, parting the strange, anemic-looking cave grasses. Stiles relaxed - the little orb resembled the forest sprite he’d met on his farm beneath the light of the full moon. He smiled, hunkered down, and extended a hand to the little creature. 

It gazed at him for a long moment, wobbling and gelatinous, then began to of-so-slowly ooze forward.

“I’m surprised to see something like you this far down,” Stiles told it, conversationally. “Don't little critters like you rely on the life-force of a place to manifest...?”

The little blob snuffled at the tip of his fingers. Then, without warning, its eyes flared red.

“What the--”

The creature lunged forwards, the translucent jelly of its face fracturing open to reveal a previously-invisible row of incredibly sharp, pointy teeth. It's fierce mouth latched onto Stiles’ hand, fangs sinking into his tender flesh.

Stiles flailed backwards, howling in pain and hitting the stone floor hard. He shook his hand, but the effort only sent pain shooting up his arm - the monstrous little glob refused to be dislodged. Grunting, he clenched his hands into a fist and sent a flare of magical energy coursing into his fingertips. The power burst forth as open flame, burning hot and bright and crisping the monster until it dislodged, shrieking like nails on a chalkboard. It landed near the edge of the still-rustling cave-grasses.

Stiles thrust his hands out in front of him, one bloody and burning, the other splayed wide. How could something so small and cute be so fucking carnivorous? The power he’d forced into his hands drained away some of the luminosity of his light-spell, and the energy it took to run both at once had him sweating despite the cool cavern environment.

The blob splattered like a cracked egg when it struck the ground, but as Stiles watched the gelatinous puddles began to twitch and roll towards one another, slowly re-creating its spherical body. He grit his teeth, casting another basic incendiary spell and setting the goo alight once again.

The material twitched twice more and then went still. Before Stiles could congratulate himself on a small, if satisfying, victory the shivering grass produced another blob.

Then another, and another.

“Oh, shit,” Stiles whispered. Giving up on his flaming hands, he turned tail and ran back towards the ladder. There was no way he would be able to fend off three at once without completely training his light-spell of juice - and then he’d be trapped in the dark, defending himself against invisible enemies.

The sound of squelching and furious squeals behind him only made him run faster. The blobs were in hot pursuit, rolling easily over the piles of rubble and gravel that required Stiles to scramble or jump. He was only a few yards away from the ladder when his foot caught a stone and he went sprawling to the ground, head cracking against stone.

With that, the light spell went out and the darkness swept in.

•○•


	4. Chapter 4

•○•

**...:Year 1, Spring 26:…**

•○•

Light filtered through the pale green foliage, the warm summer sun casting bright shadows. Stiles could feel the heat of it through his eyelids, the rosy glow of it bathing every last inch of his body. He lay stretched against the soft and uneven ground, one shoeless foot trailing in a frigid mountain stream. Laying with his eyes closed Stiles was imbued with a sense of warm tranquility. 

When he stirred, he lifted a hand to shade his eyes instinctively. 

“Shh,” said a voice behind him. It was an unfamiliar sound, and yet nothing in Stiles reacted with fear. His spark - an intrinsically good judge of character - was easy and languid within him, enjoying the pooling sunlight.

Stiles opened his eyes. 

When his vision focused in, he found himself staring up at a woman. Her hair was heaped in curling blonde piles atop her head, and cascaded down into shimmering strands of pale green that intertwined with the bright spring foliage around her. A cacophony of color ringed the clearing, every sort of flower from every possible season growing riotously upwards.

Her eyes were the deep brown of heartwood, dark as fertile soil.

“Hello, farmer,” she said, softly. The corners of her mouth turned up at the edges, transforming into an inquisitive, gentle smile. There was something ancient about the way she said those words, the greeting oddly formal given their intimate pose. 

This woman was - not a woman, not really. She emanated a calm aura so powerful that it made the air surrounding Stiles feel like molasses. She moved like dripping honey, swayed like a strong oak in the breeze. She existed in layers of power, and yet occupied a form so small and gentle that Stiles could almost believe she was a human girl. 

This woman - whoever, whatever she was - was more than a powerful sorceress. She didn’t have the glamour or manic energy of the fae, and yet she was too ethereal to be a witch, lacked the tell-tale green eyes of a dryad…. 

He had no idea what he was dealing with. 

“Who… who are you?” Stiles said, trying and failing to keep the suspicion out of his tone.

The woman laughed. Her voice was melodic and harmonious; it contained layers of birdsong and wind-in-the-cottonwoods. There was something wistful to its timber that made Stiles think all at once of the fall of leaves and the wobbly first steps of newborn fauns.

“Can’t you tell?” she asked, beaming down at him like the sun.

Stiles swallowed back his immediate, sarcastic reply. If he knew anything about powerful magical entities, it was that they were - more often than not - entirely literal. He mentally reshuffled his instinctive response to her question before opening his mouth to answer.

“You feel… familiar,” Stiles said quietly, squinting up at her. He shifted, wanting to right himself and address the woman as an equal - but then her soft hands dropped to tuck a stray strand of his hair behind his ears. Stiles found himself growing still with the motion, the urge to move his head from the pillow of her lap dying away as her fingers traced along his temples. Her magic had - at least for the moment - endlessly calm depths.

“You look so like your grandfather,” she said, softly. Her face was inhuman and unreadable, but her gentle movements were almost motherly.

Stiles’ eyes began to drift shut, lulled by the soft touch - but he forced them open. Forced himself to study her face. Why did she look so familiar? “My dad says that, sometimes.”

“Little Noah,” the woman said, face going distant. Her every movement slowed, and the bright sunlight overhead dimmed behind a sudden incursion of clouds. The change in atmosphere sparked a nervous energy within Stiles, and he reached up instinctively to touch her hand as her trailing fingers grew cooler and more tentative against his scalp. 

She twitched beneath his fingertip and looked down again, startled out of her reverie. For a moment she looked young and lost, and Stiles recalled the fleeting image of a woman in a flowery bower. “Who are you? You knew my grandpa, and my dad. Are you a forest spirit? The spirit of Cindersap woods? The entire valley?”

The woman smiled faintly at his grasping guesses. When she spoke her voice was crashing waves and burbling rivers. “I have seen many generations of humans come and go, drawing life from the soil and growing tall and strong like the trees of the mountain; I have watched from afar, and I have walked amongst you.”

The world blurred. Sudden images flashed against the inside of Stiles’ eyelids and he was sent drifting. He saw flashes of cedar plank houses and warm campfires amongst the trees, smelled the stench of disease and the smell of wildfire. He watched the first settlers chop trees, felt the bite as human expansion devoured more, and more, and more.

Stiles opened his eyes and found himself standing at the opposite side of the clearing. The woman was standing tall and proud, her long trailing robes indistinguishable from the reedy grasses sprouting up around her feet. Stiles’ eyes caught on a strange patch of her flowing attire, where the healthy layers of verdant hues were tinged a dark, sickly brown. The diseased patch appeared small, but he the moment he saw it he realized what he was dealing with. The last puzzle piece slid into place. 

‘ _Genius loci,_ ’ Stiles realized, staggering as he regained his equilibrium. Genius loci were the protective spirit of a location, imbued with all the influences that made that place unique. That would make sense - and would explain the phenomenal power and relative unstuck-ness in time. The dead brown streaks in her flowing robes would represent the tainted soil Stiles had discovered on his own farm, the poison manifesting in her metaphysical form.

But - what the fuck did a genius loci want with _Stiles_?

He took a step forward, but the motion sent a splinter of pain lancing up through his gut. It was a shock, completely out of place in the gentle light of the forest glade. 

For a moment he was elsewhere, being bounced and jostled along, awash in a sea of pain. He had a fleeting impression of darkness and a bobbing pool of light tracing across stone floors and the wooden rungs of a narrow ladder. 

’ _The mines_ ,’ he remembered, vaguely.

“No,” he whispered, focusing in on the strange forest-world around him. This was a dream - or a vision - and he wasn’t ready to wake up. The creature before him was a protective spirit of the entire valley - a spirit who had watched his grandfather and father grow up, who remembered their names, who _knew_ his family. “You must feel what’s happening,” he blurted, desperately gesturing towards the brown blemish winding its ways up her form.

The spirit’s eyes were deep, dark pools. She did not glance down at herself, but spoke sadly. “The contamination.” 

“The - yes! The contamination! It’s affecting the animals on my farm - the grubs, the worms. I’m worried it will taint the crops. I went into the mines, but - ”

“The mines are beyond my power,” she said, voice growing thin and far-away. The edges of Stiles’ vision tinged gray as his grasp of the vision grew weak. “They are an old scar; you seek the newest infection.”

Stiles nodded tightly. His right arm felt like it was on fire - he cupped it against his chest and grit his teeth against the ache. “So then - what is it? I want to help - I can get to the root of the problem.” His voice spiraled upwards, desperate for answers even as the clearing vanished entirely. “Is it human interference? Magical?”

Crunching footsteps, ripping tape, another spike of pain. The bright green world around him, with all its flowers and birdsong and deep brown eyes, blurred into nothingness.

The genius loci was gone.

•○•

When Stiles woke again, he woke in honest-to-god bone-rattling _agony_. It radiated up his arms and through his torso, dull waves of misery that set his muscles clenching with the force of it. His head pounded, while his mouth tasted like copper and dirt and bile.

He spent a brief moment longing for the painless warmth of his dreams and then took several deep breaths. When he worked up the courage to do so, he opened his eyes. He’d been expecting the worst - darkness, stone, the crushing weight of earth - but as the blurry world slowly coalesced around him he discovered that he was not in the mine at all. He was in a neat, if small, room.

A neat, small room that was in no way familiar. The walls were papered a deep, forest green, and a framed image of Artemis - complete with moon and stag - dominated the wall next to the door. 

Biting his lip with the pain of it, Stiles shifted upwards against the pillows until he was half sitting and could look down at his agonized body. He was laying in a bed (a _strange_ bed, covered in quilts - in a room (also strange) that smelled like sage and frankincense (that at least was not so strange). Someone had pulled a quilt up to his navel.

“What….” he mumbled. He had no idea how he’d gotten there.

Closing his eyes again for strength, Stiles blearily backtracked and picked his way through the jumble of memories at the forefront of his mind. He remembered his visit to Joja Mart in bits and pieces, remembered flashes of the placid lake - and then the mine, the copper, and a flash of green-tinged teeth. 

There had been _creatures_.

“Shit,” Stiles muttered hoarsely. “Shit.” 

He lifted his right arm and noticed that he’d been stripped shirtless, revealing both his embarrassing farmer tan and a set of bandages wrapped around his side and left shoulder. His forearm was also encased in a carefully wrapped bandage, its edges expertly tucked in and smoothed down. 

More concerning than the dressing, Stiles noticed that the skin peeking out from beneath the tape and gauze was a bright, angry red. His left arm was mostly whole, but also hooked up to an IV, its medical-grade plastic and metal rolling stand incongruous in a room that was most definitely not a hospital.

Finally, Stiles reached within himself for the comforting glow of his spark. The energy of it kept him centered in times of danger - but at the moment, there was very little energy to be had. The spark was small and tremulous. He must have overexerted himself - he’d kept his light spell up for hours, and then undoubtedly unleashed some of his more offensive magic against whatever had done this to him. 

And yet… 

Stiles bit his lip. Why couldn’t he remember what had happened? He remembered entering the mine, working his way down the ladders into darkness… and then there was a blank. If he closed his eyes and focused he could just recall a snatch of neon green, red eyes, and a strange, wet squelching sound in the black...

“Oh, good. You’re awake.”

A man stalked through the open door, scowling down at Stiles with eyes as cold and blue as the mountain lake. Stiles instinctively reached out on a metaphysical level to vet the man, but his spark shied tiredly away from the thought of effort. He’d exhausted the last of his reservoirs, and would have to figure the guy out the old-fashioned way.

“Who…?” Stiles tried, but his voice came out croaky. He licked his dry, cracked lips and looked around for some relief. 

The man came closer, yanked a chair from the corner up to the edge of the bed in a no-nonsense manner, then snatched a cup from the nightstand into Stiles’ hand. He stared at Stiles for a long, intense moment before Stiles acquiesced to the unspoken command and drank deeply. Much to his relief the cup contained only water - cool, clean, and invigorating. Stiles would have emptied the contents entirely, but the man reached out after his second deep gulp and pulled the cup away.

“Take it easy,” he ordered. “Make sure it stays down. Puking with stitches in your side is not an experience I’d recommend to anyone.”

“Right,” Stiles agreed. The very thought of it made his wounds twinge in sympathy. He settled back on the pillows and staring at the stranger now looming over his sickbed. The man would be about his dad’s age - and had the same rough, weathered expression that suggested he’s spent a chunk of his life deprived of sleep and fueled by coffee. “So… who are you?”

“I would ask you the same thing,” the man said, “but it’s pretty obvious. A soft-handed city boy wearing converse sneakers in a dangerous, forbidden mineshaft. You gotta be the Stilinski kid.”

“I’m twenty four,” Stiles protested, his voice dangerously close to a whine. 

“Well, you’re obviously not old enough to have any goddamn common sense,” the man snapped, favoring him with a withering look. “Those slimes nearly killed you. If I hadn’t been close enough to hear you scream you’d be feeding the horde by now.”

Stiles shivered, both at the image of himself as monster-chow and the idea that someone else had been that close to him in the blackness of the mines. He hadn’t felt the man at all - but then again, his spark had been consumed with the effort of his light spell… he hadn’t exactly been looking for other humans.

Slimes. That - that would explain the slick flashes of neon and splatters of goo that were lingering at the edges of his memory.

“To whom exactly do I owe my thanks?” Stiles asked, blearily.

The man pressed his lips together in a disapproving line. “My name is Chris Argent.”

Stiles startled at the familiar name - that made two Argents in one day. By his father’s standards this was still a coincidence rather than a pattern, but there was no way Chris and Kate were unconnected. He looked too young to be her father. Husband, maybe? 

If this was Kate Argent’s house - Stiles needed to get the holy hell out of dodge. 

He shifted again, trying to sit up, but the motion sent ripples of discomfort through his body. The IV needle wriggled unpleasantly beneath his skin and he dropped his left arm, right one steadying the infusion. “So, uh, Chris. Thanks for pulling me out of the mine and all, but I -”

“You’ve got no business going down there unarmed,” Chris snapped at him, grabbing the cup and stalking over to a pitcher in the corner. The way he refilled the mug was so aggressive that Stiles would have laughed under other circumstances. 

As it was, he squashed the urge to giggle hysterically and accept the mug, trying to appear nonchalant and in control as he wrapped his tired hands around it. “Your backpack was ripped open, so you probably lost a few finds. And it wouldn’t surprise me if you can’t remember the last few levels of the mine.”

Stiles reached up to touch his bandaged forehead. His memories were all jumbled together, intercut with flashes of dark brown eyes and confusingly gentle hands. “Now that you mention it, it does seem foggy. Should I be worried about that?”

“You were mobbed by a pack of slimes. Their venom is toxic, it causes deep infection and forgetfulness. You’re lucky you’re not quite human or the effect would be much worse.”

“Not quite…” Stiles trailed off, leveling a hard stare at the man. 

The supernatural world was a closely-guarded secret for most - and Stiles had been careful not to advertise his abilities when he returned to Stardew Valley. Much like his sexuality, he’d had no real desire to advertise his more… unique qualities, at least not until he’d won the townies over with his patented Stilinski charm.

How could this man know Stiles had a supernatural side? His brain shifted into overdrive, grasping at explanations. One - Chris Argent wasn’t human, and had sensed something similar in Stiles. Two - the room could be warded, and the presence of Stiles’ spark had set off the alarms. 

If the room was warded - was this the place he’d seen in his spellcasting that first full moon? The place with the carefully-wrought wards that twinkled so beautifully and burned through his brain when he reached out to touch?

Three - had something about Stiles given it away? Some tell? What, exactly, had happened in the mines?

He decided to prevaricate.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Stiles said, licking his lips.

Chris narrowed his eyes. “A spark _and_ a liar. That’s disappointing.”

‘ _Damn it_.’ Stiles narrowed his eyes and reached over to the IV, yanking the tape away and wincing as he pulled the fat needle from his arm. He tried to swing his legs over the edge of the bed and sit up, but the sudden motion set his head reeling and his vision dimming around the edges.

“Hey, hey, hey - “ Chris was there again, close enough to catch Stiles by the shoulder as he slumped forwards, carefully guiding his spinning head back to the pillow. 

“Let me go,” Stiles demanded, though his voice was muzzy and unimpressive. “Let me - “

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Chris said, now sounding more weary than angry. “I’m retired.”

And then - only then - did the name Argent click into place in Stiles’ brain. He’d _seen_ the Argents at the coven in the city, neatly printed down the side of the four-hundred year old bestiary. He remembered vividly where it stood on Matt’s neatly organized shelves, given pride of place for age and value.

The Argents were _hunters_. They’d started out as werewolf hunters, but as the pool of targets had dwindled, their interest had expanded.

“You’re a hunter,” he whispered.

“Retired,” Chris said again, firmly. Then he scrubbed a hand down his face, forcibly relaxing the tight lines of his brow and jaw. “Sorry, I don’t mean to menace you with my … well, my daughter calls it my ‘interrogation face’. Old habits die hard.”

Laying still cured Stiles of the worst of the dizziness, but his stomach still felt tangled in knots. “You’re a _retired hunter_?”

“These days I run the adventurer’s guild at the edge of town,” Chris said, gesturing around them with one hand. “That’s where we are - I live behind the shop. This is my daughter’s room - she moved out to the city a few years back.”

Stiles’ eyes trailed over to the poster of Artemis on the wall - that certainly checked out. 

“My current mission is to clean up the mines and make them safe for locals again - since clearly the _locals_ can’t read the warning signs and stay the hell out.” 

He scowled again, and Stiles froze in the midst of fiddling with his bandages. The guy’s face was seriously going to freeze that way if he kept this up.

Retired or not, Stiles was now outed to the most dangerous person he’d met in Beacon Hills. “How did could you tell that I’m a spark?” he asked suspiciously.

“You tripped my sister’s alarm-wards when you first moved in,” Chris said, shrugging. “We keep an eye on everyone in town with a supernatural bent - only the new guy would be stupid enough to reach out and touch them.”

“Stupid…”

“My family has a reputation around here,” Chris said, waving a hand at Stiles’ offended expression. 

Stiles thought back on Kate Argent and the predatory gleam in her eyes; even a human could sense the dark aura hanging about her person. She was definitely the sister, and definitely a threat. “So I noticed.”

“Anyone else in town would assume the wards were trapped. I hope the headache wasn’t _too_ bad.”

“Six out of ten,” Stiles lied. It had definitely been more of an eight. “So - who are the other supernatural actors in town? You mean Deaton?”

“Deaton, amongst others.”

“The wolves.”

“Yeah, the wolves. Amongst others.”

“I thought the Argents hated werewolves. Age old family rivalry and everything… silver bullets? There’s something in there about silver bullets, right?” 

“Yes. The family hates werewolves. There’s a reason I live out here at the lake and not in the family compound.”

“You… don’t hate werewolves?”

Chris tipped his chin up, his eyes flinty in the low light. He would have looked pretty cool and dramatic if they weren’t crowded into a teenage girl’s bedroom. “I don’t hunt sentient creatures.”

Stiles shivered. It didn’t inspire confidence that _a lack of murderous intent_ distinguished Chris from the rest of his family. “So... like a reverse General Zaroff. You hunt only beasts.”

Chris snorted. “The second-most dangerous game?”

Stiles felt his lips twitch upwards into a grudging smile; it shouldn’t have been so surprising that a former hunter would read short-stories about hunting, but it still felt like a connection. He relaxed slightly, worrying his lower lip with his teeth as he studied his rescuer. “So, Chris Argent, retired hunter. Which werewolves in town aren’t you killing?”

“You haven’t noticed?”

“I try not to pry. If I’ve met them, they haven’t been very obvious about it.” Usually it wasn’t hard to pick out a werewolf, what with the sniffing and moon-sickness and superhuman strength. Stiles ran through his mental rolodex of townies, lingering over a face here or there. He'd spent far too much time with the Hales for them to be wolves - his spark would have pegged them immediately if they were somewhere on the supernatural spectrum. Alex, maybe? But he seemed to have earned those muscles - he was constantly lifting weights out back. Besides, if his grandfather was a wolf he would have healed up and be able to walk on his own. Little Vincent was pretty out of control, and his father was MIA - so maybe that was the family...?

“You have to be subtle to fly under the radar in a town like this,” Chris admitted. “They wear wards to mask their magical signatures.”

“I hadn’t considered that,” Stiles admitted, mentally noting the ‘they’ Chris had used. He’d guessed there would be multiple wolves based on the howls, but it was nice to have that confirmed. A wolfpack would be more stable than a lone omega. “Things are pretty different out here.”

Disguising wards weren’t at all necessary in the city. In fact, with the Non-Violent Pact of Neutrality in place, most supernatural citizens actually advertised their identities amongst those “in the know” in the hopes of connecting with others like them. Plenty of magically gifted or non-human entities went their entire lives without meeting someone else like them. The city was a crossroads that provided an opportunity for community and family that small towns often lacked.

Beacon Hills didn’t dangerous to Stiles; his own brand of magic tended to be life-driven and relatively limited. Werewolves might be a different matter, though - they were often perceived as inherently more dangerous.

“To be honest,” Chris admitted with a wry look on his face, “it’s the worst-kept secret in town.”

“Well, I never was the most observant.” Stiles waited a beat, hoping Chris would take pity and fill him in. When the man just folded his arms and raised his eyebrows, Stiles sighed dramatically and reached for the water again, nursing his dry mouth and growing headache. Hopefully he’d be just as close-lipped about Stiles’ magical gifts.

There were a lot of threads here to unpack. If the werewolves were in hiding, they must know something about Beacon Hills that Stiles _didn’t_ know. Hunters would be good enough reason. 

And Stiles had accidentally announced his identity to Chris and his creepy sister during his first week in town. Nice.

Kate Argent…. The idea that _she_ was attached to such aggressive magical ruins was more than a little concerning. It explained, at least, her incredibly bizarre behavior at the Jojamart. She’d been fishing for information.

He moved his gaze up to Chris and frowned. “So. Kate. Basically a serial killer?”

“ _What_?” Chris asked, going stiff.

“She’s intense, man. And if she’s still in the family business, doesn’t that mean she murders people for fun?”

“She runs the _Joja Mart_ ,” Chris said, irritated. Stiles recalled her bright blue uniform and the ridiculous pillbox cap pinned into her blonde waves and had to admit the look was incongruous.

“It’s a good cover story,” Stiles reluctantly agreed. “Nobody looks twice at someone stocking the shelves of a shitty big box store. So she’s retired, too. Not axing any sentient creatures on the weekends.” 

Chris looked like he’d accidentally sucked a lemon. “The Argent family has a code. The only wolves she hunts are feral omegas, the sort that stalk the woods for human prey.”

Stiles worried his lower lip with his teeth, freeing it only briefly to say, “That still sounds an awful lot like serial killing. Nobody with wards that vicious isn’t hiding something. So - what’s she hiding?”

“She’s just protective, Stilinski. I don’t think she’s gone for a hunt since the franchise opened. When she did, she went out of state with her old buddies.” 

“I hope you‘re right,” Stiles mumbled. Without the fluids in the IV he was finding it more difficult to stay awake. The room was dim and warm and his body was throbbing with his spark’s exhaustion and the pulsing pain of a thousand tiny slime-bites. If he’d been at full power the wounds would be healing up neatly, but they would heal at a normal human rate until he’d rested long enough to rekindle the full force of his spark.

“Hey, kid. _Stilinski_ ,” Chris said, giving his arm a gentle shake to keep him awake. “We should get you home. You got someone I can call?”

Stiles bit his lip. The rolodex was further out of reach now, his tired mind unable to focus here or there. Deaton probably wouldn’t come. Leah was probably sound asleep. 

“Can you...call Derek?” he asked, voice sounding very small even to his own ears. 

The last thing he heard before passing out was Chris Argent’s incredulous chuckling.

•○•

Derek pulled up outside the Adventurer’s Guild, eyes dark and hair tousled and damp. As the sound of the bike died away the night grew still again. The torrential rain of that afternoon had trickled away into a soft, light mist that left water clinging to his cheeks and helmet, and a few cool droplets slid down the back of his neck as he hooked the helmet onto the handlebar of his bike. The weather seemed to have even the wildlife tucked away in hiding - the only sound his sensitive ears picked up was the lapping of the water in the cattails.

The Hale family was sound asleep when the shrill ring of the house phone had woken the entire family. He’d sat bolt upright in bed, body flooding with the adrenaline those late-night phone calls inevitably inspired. It could have been anything - an emergency with the store, a fire, an invading omega - but his ears had pricked with Chris Argent’s voice, and then he’d torn out of bed at the sound of Stiles’ name.

His mother and Chris may have kept up a tenuous enemy-of-my-enemy relationship, but Derek had his reservations. He didn’t want Stiles anywhere _near_ the Argents. It had occurred to him that his apparent weakness for all things Stiles would be excellent bait for a hunter’s trap - but even the knowledge that he might be walking into trouble couldn’t keep him away.

If it _was_ a trap, it wasn’t a very subtle one. But then - Stiles had plenty of friends in town. Derek couldn’t think of a single reason Chris would know of his inconvenient fascination with the guy. 

Derek inhaled, but he scented nothing on the breeze beyond the damp life-mud-compost scent of the wet woods. Trap or no trap, he wasn’t capable of ignoring any summons that involve Stiles and injury. He took a deep breath, approached the door, and knocked.

When Chris opened the door he greeted Derek with a nod, his eyes cataloging Derek’s features and then scanning the land behind him, as though he expected half the Hale pack to be at his door. If he was surprised that Derek came alone, it didn’t register on his face.

Chris gestured for Derek to enter with one calloused hand and Derek stepped over the threshold. He’d half-expected to run face-first into the magical warding powers of mountain ash - but there was no trace of the bitter substance anywhere in the front room.

The Adventurer’s Guild hall was a small building, with a long counter along the back wall and a fireplace tucked up to its right. There was a bulletin board of kill-counts and hunting records, and several racks of weaponry and clothing, ranging from boots to full-body armor. There were glow rings, vampire rings, wooden swords, iridium blades…

“No ash?” Derek asked, drawing his attention back to Chris and frowning.

“It’s a shop - ash would be bad for business. Besides,” he added, turning and striding towards the back half of the building, “mountain ash doesn’t work on monsters.”

Derek stood for a long moment, rooted to the spot by the novelty of being excluded from the ‘monster’ category. It was tough to imagine an Argent being sympathetic to the werewolf He cleared his throat, oddly touched by the sentiment, and then trailed after the man into the back rooms of the building.

The front half of the guild was a shopfront, but the back half consisted of a small kitchen and two meeting rooms. Past that, another hallway stretched away. The rooms smelled like strangers, leather, and gunpowder. The sting of it made Derek’s nose twitch.

He could hear another heartbeat in the house, strong and steady if slower than usual. Derek nearly pushed Chris out of the way in his haste to open the last door and reveal a shockingly pale, completely unconscious Stiles Stilinski sprawled across a bed.

“What happened?” Derek asked, moving to his side with a singular focus. He found himself reaching for Stiles automatically; he wouldn’t be able to draw Stiles’ pain when the man was awake, so this would be his only real opportunity to help. He wrapped his hand around an uninjured stretch of Stiles’ forearm and frowned in concentration. 

The pain, when it came, was throbbing and hot. Stiles’ lips parted in sleep, his shoulders relaxing as Derek drew his hurt away. 

Chris waited for the veins in Derek’s fingers and hand to begin flowing black before he spoke.

“I found him in the mines, alone, and completely unarmed.”

Derek’s eyes raked over Stiles’ prone form. He was all in in one piece, with bandages wrapped across his arms and his torso - but at least the IV next to him wasn’t actually in use. There was gooseflesh on his arms beneath Derek’s hands - so he tucked the blanket up and over Stiles’ chest, frowning as he did so. “What the hell was he doing in the mines?”

“Foraging, apparently.” 

“And you just happened to stumble across him?” Derek asked, dragging his attention away from Stiles to fix Chris with a hard stare. 

“Exactly.” 

Derek wanted to demand more information; how could he trust the word of a hunter? Chris’ family had hunted Derek’s for years; they served as watchdogs in the valley, ensuring the balance between werewolf and human went undisturbed. It had been decades since the Hale pack had turned a human, and yet-

 _‘Mountain ash doesn’t work on monsters.’_

Chris had trusted him and allowed him into his home, even if it was to serve the interests of a human. It would be heartless to return that olive branch with suspicion and mistrust, even if most of Derek’s brain was screaming to do exactly that. The Hale and Argent families would never be friends, but this evening had proved that Chris could be a valuable ally in a crisis. 

Besides, Talia would be horrified if he treated the man rudely in his own home.

“Thank you,” he said, though the words felt dry in his mouth.

“Don’t mention it. Just -” 

“...Derek?”

Derek twitched and drew his hand away, the black receding instantly. Stiles sagged against the bed, his own fingers twitching as the pain returned to his body. If only he’d known Derek was a werewolf - Derek would have drawn the pain away all night. 

“Hey,” Derek said, voice gravelly. “You look like shit.”

Stiles laughed, but the sound choked off as the motion twinged his stitches. “Ha ha ha,” he said, once his breathing had evened out again. “The delivery boy’s got jokes.”

Derek rolled his eyes. “You _must_ be concussed if you think I was joking.”

Stiles lifted his hand to his head. “A concussion is no fun at all,” he complained. “My dad used to keep me up all night to make sure I didn’t … you know. Sink into a coma and die.”

“New guidelines say you’re fine to sleep,” Chris told them, startling Derek. He’d almost forgotten the man was standing there.

Stiles groaned. “Really?” 

“Really,” Chris confirmed.

“God, the hours of sleep I lost over that stupid rule…”

“How often do you get concussed?” Derek asked, affronted. He didn’t like to think of Stiles being injured on a regular basis - and besides, he was pretty sure the effects of traumatic brain injury in humans were cumulative.

Stiles smiled, weakly. “I was a clumsy kid and a lacrosse fanatic. It wasn’t a weekly occurrence, but… you know.”

Jesus, humans were so _fragile_.

“You really shouldn’t make a habit of that,” Derek said, quelling the urge to reach for Stiles’ hand again by folding his own arms over his chest.

“Well, now that I know the mines are haunted by creepy slimes I’ll be sure to pack my goo-gone.”

Derek froze. He wasn’t sure if he should feel more horrified by Stiles’ intention to return to the mines, or by the fact that he’d seen what had attacked him. Humans never saw the slimes - though most avoided the mines and their supernatural residents instinctively. Stiles had both ventured inside - against all common sense - and been able to see his attackers. 

Slimes,” he repeated. Could Chris have said something? He glanced over, but Chris gave a slight shake of his head.

Stiles’ furrowed a brow at whatever Derek’s face was doing. His fingers picked at the medical tape securing the bandages on his forearm. “Yeah, you know. Grapefruit-sized chunks of jell-o full of misery and teeth?”

“You hit your head pretty hard,” Derek said gently, though his brain was whirling a mile-a-minute as he spoke. Derek had never known a pure human to sense the creatures in the mines, or that lived deep in the woods. Lydia could see them, given her banshee heritage - and Deaton, because… well. Wizard. The Argents were also perfectly aware of everything that went bump in the night. 

Jesus. If Stiles could see the slimes, what else could he sense? 

What _was_ he?

A flush of pink crept into Stiles cheeks, invading the pallor in sickly-looking splotches. “I’m not crazy, Derek,” he said, peeling the stretch of bandage away from his arm to reveal a stretch of skin mauled by tiny, prickly teeth. “There was an entire horde of them. They knocked me down and I - dropped my light.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” Derek said, giving into his baser instinct and reaching out. He didn’t take Stiles pain, but he hoped the touch at least quelled the rising frustration. 

Derek should pretend he had no idea that the caves were infested. He should act _human_ and let Stiles assume what he would - because if Stiles could see those creatures then Stiles was _not_ an ordinary, unassuming human. 

And if Stiles knew that other humans couldn’t see the slimes, but Derek admitted to it...

“You’re not the first person to talk about monsters in the cave,” Derek said, tentatively. “There are lots of local legends about it; they say that’s why they shut the mine down in the first place.”

Stiles’ hand stopped fidgeting with the edge of the bandage, though Derek could still sense his pain and agitation. “How long have they been closed?”

“Thirty years,” Chris said, frowning deeply at them both. “And anyone with any sense would stay away.”

Stiles worried his bottom lip with his teeth. “There were so many resources down there …”

“It’s not worth getting yourself killed over a few bars of copper,” Chris said, firmly.

“You’re not thinking of going back in,” Derek said, horrified by the thought. “Stiles! You’re a farmer, not a -- not a monster hunter.”

Stiles lifted his hands to quell Derek’s agitation. “I just - I was thinking it could be a good source of income in the winter, when nothing is growing.”

“Cut firewood,” Derek suggested, quickly. “You’ve got the barn. If you’ve enough hens--”

“It was just an idea,” Stiles said, eyes flicking away. He didn’t smell the least bit afraid of the mines, despite the still-gaping wounds covering his right forearm. He was brave, at least. Brave, stupid, or maybe a little bit of both.

“I can’t stop you from going back in,” Chris told Stiles evenly. “But if you do, you should at least have the equipment you need to stay alive.”

“You can’t be serious,” Derek growled, voice gravelly with displeasure. Both Chris and Stiles looked at him with surprise - from the expressions on their faces he’d let too much wolf slip into that one. 

Stiles ran his fingertips along the edge of the blanket. “Derek, I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself-”

“Could have fooled me.”

“-when I have a complete picture of the situation. I had no idea the mines were infested, but now that I do--”

Derek’s forced his voice to stay flat and emotionless. “Now that you do, your first thought is to head straight back in.”

“I’m not going straight back in. But there were things down there that could help me on the farm - could make life easier. I’m not going to write the possibility off entirely just because I was unprepared the first time around.”

“You nearly died!”

“But I didn’t! You’re not my keeper, Derek!”

“So what am I?”

Stiles froze. “What?” 

“I’m not your keeper - _obviously_ ,” Derek ground out. “But you -- you called me in the middle of the night to drive you home after a near-death experience.”

Stiles’ cheeks were pinking up again. “Derek--”

Derek looked away. “If I’m your emergency contact, you must at least see me as a friend.”

“Of course I--!”

“And if I’m your _friend_ , and if I’m expected to _drag your ass home after you let something chew on it_ , you should at least respect my opinions on how you spend your time.”

He glanced back at Stiles to find man’s mouth was hanging open. He was - for the first time since Derek had met him - completely speechless.

Chris Argent took advantage of the pause to break into the conversation. The sound of his voice made Derek jump in surprise. “Come back by when you’re mended and I’ll get you outfitted with a sword and a sturdy set of boots. You should let me know when you’re going in and when you’ve come out again - if you’re not accounted for by the end of the day I’ll go in after you.”

“That…” Stiles trailed off, licking his lips. “That sounds reasonable.”

“With that said,” Chris continued. “It’s four in the morning. If you want to sleep here, that’s fine.  
But if you’re going home …. Well. Go.”

Derek watched Stiles wrestle with the options. Stay where he was, stay comfortable and sleep - or get home to his own bed, his own home, his own space. When his eyes tracked over to Derek, Derek only shrugged. “Your call.”

“Mm,” Stiles said, eyes lingering on Derek. “I don’t want to have woken you up for nothing. Help me up?”

It took some patience, but Derek slung an arm around Stiles waist and guided him out the front door and onto his bike. He tipped the rain out of his helmet and wiped out the inside with a sleeve before offering it to Stiles, who wordlessly clipped it on and then collapsed against Derek’s back the moment he settled on the seat. 

For the first time in his life Derek wished he’d purchased some practical mom-mobile - or at least a bike with a sidecar. “You’re sure you can hang on?”

He felt Stiles nod, then dig his thumbs into Derek’s sides in search of his belt loops. In the doorway, Chris was watching them with a knowing expression. Derek squashed down the urge to snarl at his raised eyebrows, and instead lifted a hand to thank Chris for taking the time to call him in.

Derek revved the engine, took a deep breath, and let the bike’s headlamp guide them back to the farm.

•○•

**...:Year 1, Summer 1:…**

•○•

The change of seasons hit Stardew Valley and Beacon Hills like a ton of bricks. Stiles rolled out of bed, every inch of his body aching and sore after his disastrous adventure in the mines. He stretched gingerly. He’d grown accustomed to the 6am wake-up calls required by farm life, but his injuries needed more sleep than he could spare to heal thoroughly. 

Being a spark made life easier in many ways; Stiles could whip up a healing balm like it was going out of style. Still, his careful blend of herbs could only expedite healing, not undo the abuse he’d put his body through. If his spark had been stronger he could have infused the concoction with magic for better results … but at the moment the effort would have done more harm than good.

Stiles moved slowly through his morning routine. He checked the weather, made himself a farm-fresh omelet and a cup of coffee, then threw open the front door and inhaled deeply.

He froze.

Every single spring crop in his fields was brown and wilted in the bright early morning light. Branches had fallen overnight, stones peeked through the soil in his neatly tilled fields. It was though the changing season had set reset on all the hard work he’d put into clearing the land that spring. 

“Summer, noooooo,” Stiles groaned into his mug, already imagining how his muscles would ache once the land was re-cleared. Maybe he’d just take a day off. With the spring harvest done, nothing needed watering. He could rest here - or maybe curl up in bed and sleep until the shadows were long across the foot of his bed...

He sat gingerly, dangling his feet off the porch and staring morosely at his property. How had his grandfather managed this year in and year out? Was it possible to use his spark to ward against the effects of the season? Did he even want to try that, when his crops relied so heavily upon the changes in light and temperature? If he magically tampered with his crops, were they technically still ‘organic’?

The thought of magic brought him back around to his slowly-healing spark and the events in the mine. More importantly - it brought to mind the strange vision he’d experienced.

A _genius loci_. Stiles shivered. That strange woman was by far the most powerful magical creature he’d ever interacted with. It was both flattering and immensely distressing to find himself the focus of her attention, even if it had only been for a short time. 

And she was suffering - he was sure of it. That sickly brown streak was an ominous reminder that the health of the valley was in danger. 

Stiles had no doubt that the valley’s genius loci could tell him the source of the taint he’d discovered; he’d just have to figure out how to ask for details in a way she would understand. He sipped his coffee and stared into the middle distance, wondering if Deaton had any advice on summoning spirits. If there was a powerful guardian spirit stomping around the Cindersap woods, surely he’d have noticed.

Not that Stiles had intended to summon her the first time - and wasn’t _that_ strange. How often did a being like that interject herself into the human world? Could she be drawn up again with a spell?

He’d have to collect a few more samples of the tainted grubs when he re-tilled the fields for his summer crops. Maybe he could send them out for analysis or a second opinion - he knew a werecat who worked at the Beacon City Zoo.

While the threat to the valley occupied most of Stiles’ thoughts, a part of him was consumed with pettier concerns. 

Stiles had worked through the pain to harvest the last of his spring crops on the 28th, but Derek has passed by the farm early enough to miss Stiles entirely. There was definitely an awkward conversation in their future - Derek was bound to notice that Stiles’ injuries were healing faster than they should. 

God, why had he asked Chris to call him, of all people? It would have been so much easier to lie if Derek hadn’t seen the full extent of his injuries.

Thinking of the eyeful he’d given Derek made Stiles want to climb under a rock and hide. He could only imagine how disgusting he must have looked, covered in blood and slime and showing off his truly abysmal tan lines. On top of all that, Stiles was pretty sure Derek didn’t believe him about the slimes. He’d gone pale when Stiles mentioned the creatures, then acted cagy for the rest of their conversation. 

It was only later, after he’d had some time to nurse his wounds, that Stiles realized how crazy he must have sounded to a human. 

_Human_. Stiles sighed.

It was hard not to feel a bit disappointed at that revelation. A little part of Stiles had hoped that Derek was the whole package - hot, fit, kind, into dudes, and supernaturally aware. Of course, Stiles had learned, dating Matt, that someone “too good to be true” was usually exactly that… but he’d definitely been nursing a not-so-secret hope that Derek might prove the exception to the rule.

But Derek was human - and he, like the rest of the townies in Stardew Valley - couldn’t be privy to Stiles’ private, magical life. 

It was just as well if he thought Stiles was crazy.

He tipped his face up and let the warmth of the sun trail along his features. Later in the day it would be properly hot, but it still felt cozy and pleasant at this time of day. The summer sun was far more invigorating than the chilly early mornings of spring had been. It carried with it the promise of corn, wheat, dark blueberries and sweet melon. 

Stiles forced himself to refocus, shoving down worries about the town and the mines and zeroing in on the real reason he’d come all this way.

Grandpa’s farm wasn’t going to reinvent itself. He’d worry about the farm first, valley second, and Derek - well, he just wouldn’t worry about Derek at all.


	5. Chapter 5

•○•

**...:Year 1, Summer 11:…**

•○•

The Stardew Luau was the town’s most famous summer festival, a boisterous midsummer smorgasbord that attracted both locals and tourists alike. The centerpiece of the entire affair was a huge iron stewpot.

The tradition of the luau called for everyone in the village to bring _something_ to contribute to the luau stew, or at least a pot-luck dish to be consumed by visitors. 

Once Mayor Lewis decreed the famous Luau Stew to be ready, the governor – who rarely graced the painfully rural Stardew Valley with his presence – would perform a taste-test. Good reviews generally made the papers, and the resulting crowds of tourists would swarm the beach and local restaurants for the remainder of the summer. Bad reviews meant their beach was... a little more private.

As much as Derek hated the throngs of tourists who descended on the Valley each summer, he knew they were a critical part of the town’s financial ecosystem. They brought their appetites and their wallets, and Hale General would cheerfully sell them all the sunscreen, bug spray, and beach toys they could ever need. 

The entire Hale family was involved in the Luau, which meant Derek was sweating it out on the beach at six a.m. hauling enough fresh wood to get the communal fire burning hot and bright all day. Cora and their father had been cooking throughout the previous 48 hours, making sure that the Hale Family General contribution to the pot-luck was impressive and better than that of the Joja Mart. 

Derek nudged another huge log into place, then stepped back to admire the frame that would soon be burning merrily in the sand. Laura knelt beside it, twisting newspaper and dried grasses into knots that she stuffed into it into every available nook and cranny. This was the fifth year in a row that Derek and Laura been tasked with building the fire, and by now they had it down to an art.

Truth be told, Derek was highly skeptical of the luau stew as a general concept. Tradition or not, it was basically a highly-publicised and theoretically edible game of Russian Roulette. 

And there had definitely been some bad years - like that time Sam poured a pound of anchovies into the brew and made the entire beach smell like boiled fish. Another year little Vincent had added a box of macaroni and cheese, but failed to take it out of the cardboard box. The visiting governor had thrust in the ladle for his formal taste test and fished out a melty plastic packet of faux-cheese.

Some years the stew was good - last year’s had been excellent, if a little too spicy for the kids. Locals with gardens or farms contributed the best their properties had to offer. 

He wondered what Stiles was bringing. Stardew Valley’s newest resident had just harvested his first batch of corn and there had been some good ears in the mix. Derek recognized leafy tomato stalks, tufty radishes, orbs of red cabbage, and a little square of bright red poppies on the property. That meant there were a lot of luau options, and if the deep tan Stiles had developed was any indication, they would all be well-tended and delicious. 

Stiles was clearly pouring his heart and soul into keeping the farm on track. Derek had half-expected his devotion to flag once Spring rolled by. Summer in the valley was hot, tending crops in the fields was sweaty, exhausting work, and Stiles had clearly never spent much time working at manual labor. Derek’s dashed hopes of purchasing the Stilinski farm were assuaged by the reassurance that the land was in good hands - but Stiles’ moments of success were also a painful reminder that the farm was out of Derek’s reach forever.

When he’d stopped by to pick up the corn yesterday, Stiles had smiled weakly and offered Derek a few choice ears tied up with a length of twine. 

“Here, I saved you a few,” he’d said sweetly, tanned and smelling of earth and sweat. God - Derek wished he knew what Stiles _was_. He’d been watching for days, skirting the Stilinski farm in both human and wolf form, spying and scenting and learning absolutely nothing he didn’t already know. Stiles looked human, he acted human, and yet…

Stiles tipped his head, eyebrows quirked quizzically. “Is that a no?” 

“There’s going to be so many leftovers from the luau, the corn would just go to waste,” Derek said, heart lurching at the flash of disappointment in Stiles’ eyes. 

The excuse was a weak one and they both knew it. Stiles pulled the ears back, biting his lip, and then quietly helped Derek load the shipment up. He stood at the mailbox as Derek pulled away, the five-ear bundle dangling dejectedly from his fingertips.

Alex and Sebastian showed up at eight to help set up picnic mats made out of woven reeds, long tables, and a volleyball net. Working with the other guys in town was always a delicate art - Derek often thought things would get done more quickly if he and Laura were able to prepare the entire beach on their own. He was careful to appear strong but not superhumanly strong, and let one of the humans take the lead. That human was usually Alex, the buff, brown-haired jock who lifted weights in his backyard from dawn until dusk. Derek and Alex were not exactly friends - but Derek was fit enough that Alex occasionally cornered him to chat about high-intensity workouts and protein powder. 

Sebastian was on the scrawnier side - he was pale and dark haired, and insisted on wearing all black even in the _heat of summer on the beach_. He was the only high school goth Derek had ever met who had never managed to grow out of the phase.

It only took half an hour for Seb’s pale skin to begin showing the effects of the sun. When Laura reappeared, hauling a wagon full of tabletop centerpieces, she whacked him with her sunhat until he retreated to one of the shady canopies and applied a thick white layer of sunscreen to his face.

The luau theme meant there were loads of fresh flowers to be arranged and big bowls of ripe fruit free for the taking. Setup took the better part of the morning and by the time eleven AM rolled around Derek was sweaty, starving, and ready for a nap. 

“Potatoes first,” his mother called. Derek smiled at Alex and Sebastian, who both nodded approvingly at the choice. He’d packed the last of the family’s spring potatoes, neatly cubed, as his personal contribution - and the earlier they went in, the softer they would be.

“Solid pick,” Alex muttered, smirking at them. “I brought in some of of grandma’s dried basil.”

Derek grinned. Alex’s grandparents lived in town, and while George was incredibly grumpy most of the time, his wife Evelyn was known far and wide for tending the village’s many flower arrangements and garden displays. Her care kept all the public space in town thriving.

Sebastian fished his contribution out of his backpack and unwrapped five ears of corn, carefully knotted together with a length of twine.

Derek froze, heart twisting unpleasantly within his chest. That was undoubtedly _his_ corn. Stiles had turned around and given _his_ corn to someone else.

“Those are…. Nice,” Derek said, awkwardly. 

Sebastian _blushed_. Oh, god. He was blushing. He was blushing and holding a gift that Stiles had given him, and - Derek actually felt sick.

Alex glanced between the pair of them, eyebrows peaked with curiosity. Derek forced himself to stay cool, to keep his expression gruff and tired rather than open and betrayed. 

He hadn’t accepted the gift, after all. It wasn’t all that surprising that Stiles would turn his gaze elsewhere. 

Besides - the gift might not mean anything at all. It might just be a gesture of friendship. It took seeing someone else on the receiving end of Stiles’ generosity to make Derek realize that a part of him had indeed assumed that the gifts were more than just a friendly gesture. 

They had been thoughtful - crops that Stiles knew Derek liked, enough for his entire family. He’d shared his first batch of farm eggs and dropped fresh flowers off at the shop. There had been possibility in his eyes when he looked at Derek, and now... 

“Thanks,” Sebastian said, looking away and clearing his throat. “Stiles dropped some by the house yesterday. I’m not sure it’s stew material - it might be better grilled.”

“Oh man, I love grilled corn on the cob,” Alex interjected, reaching for one of the ears. Sebastian handed it over suspiciously, and Alex hefted it like a football, blitzing backwards as he pretended to pass it down the beach and into the massive iron stewpot, husk and all. Sebastian flipped him off.

Derek extended a hand and took one of the ears for himself. He tugged the husk away and inhaled, smelling the sweet, sunny aroma of fresh kernels and silky fiber. The corn would be sweet - probably fantastic when grilled with butter and rosemary.

“I vote for grilled,” he said, forcing himself to smile at Sebastian. “But ask my mom. If nobody else brings corn they might want some sweetness to balance out the savory.”

Sebastian nodded and Derek returned the corn. “I’m just gonna grab the potatoes,” he muttered, watching Alex and Sebastian chat as they turned towards the distant stew pot, arguing all the way about grilling or stewing Stiles’ fresh produce.

Derek pulled the carefully diced potatoes out of his backpack. He’d brought along a huge glass container with a plastic lid. The produce grown in the Hale family’s kitchen garden typically stayed with the family - only Laura’s eggs were boxed and sold in the store. Derek and Cora had sown the potatoes, and Peter had loosened the plants with a pitch fork on the last day of Spring, shaking dirt away from the roots as Derek harvested the bulbous potatoes, filling a sack and carefully arranging them in the cool basement for later use.

He stared down at the containers and bit his lip. He should have accepted the gift. Even if he didn’t know what Stiles was, he knew the man wasn’t dangerous - didn’t he? No part of his wolf sensed a malicious nature within Stiles. He smelled like earth and sage, occasionally of ozone and autumn leaves. 

More importantly, he cared for his farm the way his grandfather had cared for his farm. Surely no grandchild of Old Man Stilinski could mean the town harm - right?

•○•

It was surprisingly easy to fall asleep on the public beach, despite the din of distant music, the shouts of Vincent and the other kids as they splashed and played in the water, all of it underscored by the rush and whoosh of the sea. Derek dreamed of distant music and eyes the color of fertile soil.

He woke sometime later, the sun bright and high behind his eyelids. The sleepy moment before he drew completely awake was magical - all warm sand, distant birds, and the low white noise of distant waves. Before Derek could stir and crack his eyes open in the afternoon brightness he heard familiar voices off to his left.

“But Cora, that’s so exciting! How are you not more excited?!” Laura said, voice nearly a shriek.

“I don’t know,” Cora answered, sounding tired. “I mean, I’m not sure I’m gonna go.”

“I didn’t even know you were applying!”

Derek’s heart began to pound in his ears. He was definitely overhearing something he wasn’t meant to overhear -- but there was no way to move away from the girls without making it clear he’d been eavesdropping. 

“Lydia convinced me to try.” There was a moment of silence, then Cora spoke again: “I guess I didn’t want to get mom and dad’s hopes up. I didn’t want to get my hopes up, either. I just wanted to see what would happen.”

 _College_. Cora had gotten into college – she must have applied, interviewed, and been accepted without saying a word to the rest of them. God, the two of them were so alike - Derek had been just as secretive about his designs on the Stilinski farm. Would it have been easier if he’d talked about it to the rest of his family? 

Probably not – now that the farm was out of reach, he was glad he hadn’t had to deal with condolences and pep-talks from his parents. He was both entertained and strangely sad that Cora had taken the exact same route with her secret college plans.

“Lydia convinced you?” Laura asked, in a voice that was entirely too knowing for Cora’s own good.

“She talks about college like it’s heaven on earth,” Cora muttered.

“And she wants you to share that with her.”

There was a long moment of silence, then Cora sighed and her voice grew muffled. If Derek had been human he wouldn’t have been able to catch a word. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Laur. She’s - she’s so brilliant, and I’m just…”

“You got into B.C.U.,” Laura said, firmly. “You’ve always been smarter than me, and I’m sure Lydia knows it. That woman wouldn’t date a dumbass.”

“We’re… we’re not…”

“Whatever you want to call it! She’s into you! She stops by the shop to talk to you! She danced with you! She obviously wants you to go to school with her so you can get sloppy drunk at house parties and make out on someone else’s grimy couch and make all the frat boys jealous!”

“ _Laura!_ ” Cora whined, which only made Laura laugh.

“Look, baby sis. Beacon City is a great school. You should go! Give it a try! There’s really nothing to lose, at this point.”

There was a long moment of quiet, interrupted only be the crashing of waves on the shore. “It’s … it’s super expensive.”

“That’s why we have savings,” Laura said, simply. She sounded so much like their mother in that moment that Derek’s heart twinged with pride - Laura would be a fantastic alpha, one day. Just like their mother.

“But – come on Laura. Things around the store are tight. If I go, you’ll have to hire someone new. And with Joja Mart eating into the bottom line.... Mom’s worried. I know she’s worried.”

“It’s her job to worry about the store,” Laura told her, firmly. Derek wanted to cheer her on – Laura always gave the best advice. “It’s your job to worry about you, and what you want to do with your life.”

“I’m happy enough in Stardew Valley. You’re happy here, Derek is happy here, the pack is here - I’m happy here too.”

“But you _might_ be happier somewhere else. You won’t know until you try, Cora. Just because Derek and I didn’t go straight into college doesn’t mean we’ll never go, and doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.”

Cora’s voice got smaller, and Derek – despite his better judgment – strained to hear it. “Why didn’t you? Go to college, I mean?”

“I thought about it,” Laura admitted. Then she laughed. “Did you know I got into NYU?”

“ _What?!_ ” Cora asked, affronted. Derek had to work to keep his face blank and continue to feign sleep. Laura hadn’t told him that – he’d had no idea she’d even applied for anything other than the community college one town over. “You got into NYU and you didn’t go?!”

Laura shrugged. “I just… it didn’t feel right. It was too far from home, and too far from the pack. New York City is nice in theory, but it doesn’t sound like someplace I want to spend years of my life. I like seeing the sky.”

“But it’s _New York!_ ” Cora said, flabbergasted. 

“It’s New York, and I’m just not a big-city person,” Laura said with a helpless laugh. Derek could imagine her shrugging, could picture her self-deprecating smile perfectly. “I’ve never wanted to live someplace like that, really. I submitted my application to give myself the option, to prove to myself that I could get in. When I did, I thought hard about going, talked to mom and dad, talked to Peter… and I decided not to. I don’t regret it.”

Derek swallowed back a bizarre wave of relief. He couldn’t imagine what the last few years of his life would have been like without Laura around. 

“Besides, Beacon City is a heck of a lot closer and a heck of a lot more affordable. Uncle Peter commutes in to the bank, so if you wanted to come home on weekends or full moons you’d even have a free ride.”

“I’ll think about it,” Cora decided, grudgingly.

“That’s all I ask for,” Laura told her. She paused. “Didn’t Stiles go to B.C.U.?”

“Did he?”

“I think so. He might have a good perspective on what it was like.”

“Well, he’s not a werewolf who’s never lived away from home before, so don’t be surprised if I take his advice with a metric ton of salt…”

“He’s a good guy. I think he’d shoot you straight,” Laura said, earnestly. Derek agreed, even though it annoyed him.

“Just - you know be happy for you, no matter what you choose.”

There was another long silence, cut only by the sound of distant laughter and the twang of someone picking out the Sukiyaki Song on the ukulele. “Thanks, Laura.”

“Anytime, baby sis. Now let’s wake Derek up before he burns to a crisp.”

“But he’s so cute when he’s lobster-colored!”

Derek was duly woken by Cora kicking sand over his knees. He grumbled sleepily at his sisters as Laura prodded at the skin on his bare torso to check for sunburn. When they pulled him to his feet, he threw his arms around their shoulders and turned them back towards the luau.

It was lunch time at last, and most of the townsfolk and tourists were scattered across the strand with paper plates piled high with food. On the buffet table, Cora’s pasta salad had been decimated, while their father’s deviled eggs were entirely gone. Derek glanced sideways at his sister, who was grinning with pleasure at the nearly-empty pasta salad bowl.

The mysterious ukulele player turned out, of course, to be Stiles. His long fingers were well-suited to the instrument, and at his feet the Hale twins were enthusiastically singing along to “Hakuna Matata”.

The singing quickly devolved into a tickling-match, which prompted Stiles to shift backwards, raising the instrument over his head as the twins’ flailing send sand flying every which way.

“Hey Stiles!” Laura shouted, with a wave. “What did you add to the stew?”

“Red cabbage,” Stiles said, cheerfully. That was a safe choice – Derek had been halfway convinced Stiles would throw in something bizarre, like fried eggs or fresh flowers. “And here – check this out!” He beamed at the Hales, set the ukulele off to one side, and began digging in his battered brown backpack. He drew out not one but two ripe midsized melons, hefting them up in front of his chest. “Would you like a slice of my melons?” he asked, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively.

Laura and Cora laughed, while Derek – inexplicably – felt the tips of his ears go hot. He rolled his eyes and looked over at the twins, thankful that they were still to young to cotton on to Stiles’ ridiculous joke. “I’ll… go find a knife,” he told Stiles, before fleeing back towards the buffet line.

The melon was good – and if Derek had to work hard not to stare as Stiles sucked sticky juice from those long fingers, well. Derek was the only one who needed to know.

Once the twins were thoroughly coated in juice, Laura and Cora herded them towards the waves. Stiles and Derek watched them go, gathering up the discarded rinds and tossing them into one of the bins stationed at the end of the long tables.

“The stew was pretty good,” Stiles said, glancing sideways at Derek. Derek could feel how the easy camaraderie between them had shifted - but he had no idea how move back to the way things had been before the mines.

“Yeah,” Derek agreed. “Sebastian had them grill up your corn. Did you get taste?”

Stiles’ face lit up excitedly. “Did he? That’s awesome! Come on let’s go see if there’s any left!”

Alex was manning the grill, with Sam hanging out in a folding chair beside him with a red solo cup dangling between his fingers. When Stiles walked up, Sam reached out and the two of them engaged in a complicated fist bump/secret handshake that upset the drink and had both of them laughing before it was done.

Jesus, was there anyone Stiles didn’t know? He’d only been here for half a year and he was already better friends with the townies than Derek had ever been.

“Any corn left?” Stiles asked hopefully, beaming at the two men.

Alex grinned back. “Seb said we should keep one aside for you. Here, I’ll warm it up.” 

When the corn cob was toasty warm and dripping with butter, Stiles had Alex slice it in half, shoving one sticky sample into Derek’s hands. Derek could feel Alex and Sam watching them as they walked towards the shore.

It felt good to have Stiles’ attention all to himself. “It looks good,” he said grudgingly, rolling the corn over in its little paper tray and inspecting the kernels. The veg did look delicious - the kernels were round and fat and bright buttery yellow, proof that they’d had plenty of sun and just enough water.

“You once told me the truth was in the tasting,” Stiles recalled, smiling faintly.

“I stand by it,” Derek said with a shrug, then took a bite - then another, and another. The corn was a perfect blend of buttery and crunchy, and the sweet kernels popped with flavor each time he bit down. It was some of the best corn Derek had ever eaten.

“I guess that’s a good sign,” Stiles said, clearly struggling to hide a laugh.

Derek swallowed, scraping together a bit of his dignity. “If I’d realized your corn was this good, I wouldn’t have passed on the thank-you present,” he admitted.

Something in Stiles relaxed visibly, his shoulders easing down and his expression opening up.  
Somehow, against all odds, Derek had managed to say the right thing. 

“Nothing says sorry-I-almost-died like fresh corn,” Stiles said jokingly, and Derek rolled his eyes in response. That was all it took - suddenly the air between them was clear, things felt the way they’d felt at the end of spring. That hint of promise was back in Stiles’ eyes, and the sight of it made Derek’s stomach lurch pleasantly.

“I’m going back into the mine,” Stiles told him, firmly.

Derek looked away, out at the sea. “Did you talk to Chris Argent about it?”

“He’s been showing me how to use a sword,” Stiles said. “And I bought a good pair of boots, since apparently converse are an unacceptable choice of attire when spelunking.”

“Spelunking is only for caves,” Derek muttered, as if that was the part of that statement he had a problem with. 

“I’m sorry I was kind of an asshole,” Stiles continued on, firmly pushing through Derek’s pedantic - and petulant - response. “I don’t like being told what to do, and I really do think the materials in the mine will help me improve the farm. I need copper and iron if I’m going to start rebuilding the outbuildings and start keeping animals bigger than chickens. I… I know how to take care of myself.”

“I’m sorry I freaked out,” Derek answered, gruffly. “I - I’m not used to seeing people get hurt. I… you’re a good guy. I don’t want you to get killed in some dark cave just because you want to re-roof an old farmhouse.”

“It’s more than an old farmhouse to me,” Stiles said, looking away.

It was more than that to Derek, too.

They came to a little wooden bridge that crossed the mouth of the river and connected this side of the beach to the next. Derek remembered it being washed out - but someone had clearly come over and repaired the wooden stretch. It wasn’t expertly done, but the bridge was solid and held their weight.

The far side of the beach was much quieter. Seaweed, sea urchins and pieces of coral dotted the rocks, and Stiles began collected them as they walked neatly wrapping each one and dropping it into his omnipresent rucksack. He was always working, always looking for an opportunity to make a little more money, to learn one more new skill - it was something Derek truly enjoyed about Stiles. He was dedicated.

Derek automatically bent to help. “You’ll always tell Chris when you go in?”

“Of course I will. He’s got a sign-in sheet, actually,” Stiles pulled an annoyed face.

“And if you see any more… any more…”

“Slimes,” Stiles insisted, annoyance flashing through his eyes.

“If you see anything dangerous, you’ll get out as soon as you can.”

“If I think the situation is truly more than I can handle, I’ll beat a hasty retreat.”

Derek worried his bottom lip with his teeth. “Okay,” he said.

•○•

**...:Year 1, Summer 14:…**

•○•

Stiles' second adventure into the mines began just as innocently as his first. He waited for a rainy morning, knowing that nature would take care of the time-consuming task of watering the crops out in the fields. Then he packed up his belongings and hiked along the northern path, crossing Robin and Demetri’s packed-earth yard and skimming the north edge of the mountain lake until he’d reached the mine entrance once again.

True to his word, he signed in with Chris Argent and went in with all the accoutrement a miner could possible need. He had a high-beam lantern, good boots, several layers of clothing and both his pickaxe and his hoe. The small sword he’d purchased from Chris fit neatly into a holster at his hip.

He’d waffled a bit on the sword. Stiles’ spark gave him far more power than met the eye, but brute physical force had never been his forte. He was more of a coaxing spark, asking nicely and gleefully celebrated when the mystical forces of the universe offered up what he was looking for.

Offensive magic was hard, and his control wasn’t the greatest - he tended to blow all of his internal fuses, exhausting his magical supplies just as he had at the end of spring. “Maybe I should talk Deaton into lessons,” he muttered to himself as he studied the dark square maw cut into the mountain.

Any target practice with the local wizard would have to wait. Stiles was on a mission.

The day turned into a productive one. Stiles’ first goal was to gather up enough copper ore to smelt into bars. Those bars would be handed over to Robin, who would build his first Silo and upgrade the chicken coop. 

He was also looking for the types of stone that could be used in spellwork. The recent dreams of tainted genius loci had Stiles on edge. His spark had only just recovered from the overexertion of his first visit to the mine, which meant he had spent the last few weeks completely helpless to follow up on the many questions his visions left behind.

Stiles was ready to reach out to the forest spirits and see if they had any ideas. He was also planning a detailed survey of town - he’d written up some adjustments to his favorite dowsing spell, to see if he could key in on what parts of town were currently affected by the poison grubs.

Quartz was a clarifying gem, and a good focus. It would be helpful in any workings he managed. Amazonite, moldavite - any of those would add strength to his efforts to suss out the origin of the magical taint.

The actual act of mining, though, turned out to be boring as hell. Repetitive manual labor was something Stiles typically enjoyed, but that was up above the ground where the sun and breeze and plants all provided encouraging and delightful company. The mineshaft was a dead space sprinkled with displaced boulders and clusters of cave carrots, and without any cheerful distractions the work quickly grew monotonous and tiring.

Quartz, at least, was an easy find - and once he’d struck the crystal chunk free of the wall, Stiles was able to wave it clean, his spark humming happily at the simply purifying exercise. That done, Stiles put his back to a corner of the room and pulled out chalk, drawing a circle around him.

He cast a simple locating spell, one that would let gemstones glimmer in his sight and aid in the speed of his mining exercise. It felt a bit like cheating - but other miners had been picking these upper levels clean for years, and Stiles didn’t have all day.

It felt fantastic to use his spark again. It was a part of him, a muscle that needed daily use in order to stay in shape, and two weeks of “magical bed rest” had been hard on both Stiles’ mental health and his magical prowess. It was nice to feel the magic flow so freely through him once again.

With his eyes magically lit, the mine walls began to twinkle, each thinly-hidden mineral or ore a spark of starlight against dark stone. 

Stiles smiled and went back to work.

It was five o’clock when Stiles decided to head home. He’d worked his way down through twenty levels of the mine - and now his spark was shuddering and anxious, eager to escape the cloying dark and return to the bright heat of a summer’s day. Stiles had long ago learned to trust the instincts manifested by his magical core - it sensed more than he did, and one ignored instinct at one’s own peril.

He found to his delight that the ancient miner’s lift was still functioning. The idea of riding swiftly upwards sent a spike of joy through his heart, and he touched the metal with careful fingers, letting his spark course through the conduits and chains and reassure him that the mechanism was entirely whole. 

God, a quick ride beat the hell out of climbing up all those ladders.

The elevator creaked and rattled, shivering as it rose past level after dark level. Stiles’ lantern glanced over the stony crags and debris he’d walked past that morning, as each jerk or jolt send trails of dust cascading down around him. 

Still, he wasn’t afraid. He kept a hand on the metal frame, confident in his spark’s reassuring glow, until the elevator stopped and the metal lattice slid away.

The cavern was dimly lit, but after hours underground it felt bright as day. He was just moving forward, one foot on the solid stone surface, when a pulse of dark, strong magic struck him.

Magic that powerful felt like an icy tidal wave. It shuddered through Stiles’ body, making his teeth ache - and his own spark, in turn, flared up protectively to fend off the chill washing through his heart and bones.

The elevator clanked and rattled at the first pulse of magic, and then the swaying metal cage - and the stone around it - began to tremble and quiver. Stiles realized his precarious position instantly and threw himself forward, eager for solid stone beneath his feet. He hit the ground hard, rolling away from the jerking and swaying elevator.

Almost as soon as he’d left the suspended metal cage, there was a creak and a lurch and the elevator dropped half a level, then jerked to a stop with only a sliver of its open doorway visible.

As disconcerting as a swaying elevator had been, the fact that the stone floor of the mine was _also_ vibrating was even more alarming. Adrenaline had Stiles up and running towards the mouth of the cave as fast as he could

He burst into the light, the shock of late-afternoon sun blinding his sensitive eyes. He squinted blearily, unsure of where the safest place would actually be. There was no roof over his head, but he was still standing at the base of a mountain with high, craggy cliffs jutting over him. The danger of falling rocks was real, and the danger of landslides even more so.

Stiles threw up a shielding spell with one hand, his fear honing his spark into sharp focus. The silvery disk of his shield followed the line of his palm as he threw it over his head, angling it to bounce falling debris away from his body. That done, Stiles began to jog, tilting this way and that as the ground continued to tremble.

Each time a stone or cascade of dirt hit the shield, there was a hiss and a pop and the material pinged away. It sounded like a magical bug zapper - and from the frequency of the pops, Stiles was glad he’d thought to raise the shield. One particular stone was large enough to make him stagger as it struck the shield - it was too heavy to bounce, and instead dropped to the ground near his feet, as huge and heavy as a bowling ball.

Stiles swallowed tightly, focusing his stinging eyes on the path ahead.

And then, all at once, the quake stopped entirely - leaving a strange silence devoid of breeze or birdsong behind. Stiles picked up his pace and dashed across the bridge, his trajectory bending south.

The roof of Robin’s house had just come into view when the ground began to rattle again, accompanied by a sound like a gritty freight train. Stiles’ animal hindbrain knew instantly that a landslide was happening and lit up in terror at the unseen danger, but he didn’t dare stop to look around and figure out where it was coming. He gave up on his shield entirely and ran towards the relative safety of Robin’s clear, flat yard.

As he rounded the corner of the house he found Lydia, Robin, Demitrius, Sebastian and his half-sister Maru clumped together at the center, as far from any roofs or trees or hills as possible. 

Robin spotted him first and ran forward, catching him up in a surprisingly tight hug. Her carpenter arms were firm and strong, thanks to her days spent building and cutting wood. “Stiles!” she exclaimed, looking him over with a keen frown. “You’re covered in - are you -?”

“Fine,” Stiles said, breath coming in ragged pants. He dropped his hands to his thighs and doubled over, trying to catch his breath. His vision swam, but he could see the dust and grime on his hands and legs, proof of his narrow escape from the mines.

“Stand straight,” Lydia ordered, tugging on his arm. “Put your hands over your head. You’re compressing your lungs and making it harder to breathe.”

Stiles let her manhandle him out of the bend, placing his hands on his head and inhaling deeply. It did seem to help. When he opened his eyes again Sebastian smiled at him weakly, his face even more pale than usual.

“Where are you coming from, son?” asked Demitrius, giving the mountains behind Stiles a worried look.

“The mines,” Stiles gasped, chest still heaving.

“Oh my god,” Maru whispered, wearing a horrified expression. “That’s - “

“You’re lucky to be alive,” Demetrius said, seriously. “Being underground for a shake like that…”

Stiles was trying very hard not to think about how being underground during an earthquake might have ended. He hoped that he’d been the only one in the mines - had Chris been down there? “Are earthquakes common out here?”

“ _Earthquakes_ are,” Lydia muttered darkly. Something in her tone made Stiles look at her sharply. She was staring right back at him, challenge in her eyes. 

Stiles thought back to the pulse of magic that preceded the shaking. It hadn’t felt like earth magic - the power in the ley lines below the town was warm and friendly, more like sun-warmed puddles and streams than a rushing, frigid tidal wave.

“We should go check out the damage,” Sebastian said, worriedly. “If the landslide is anywhere near the house…”

“Is that a good idea?” Robin worried, looking between her children with a concerned expression.

“If nothing else we should be checking for soil stability, work out if it’s safe to stay home until things are shored up,” Maru agreed with her half-brother. “Dad, should we grab - ?”

“Let me,” Demitrius offered. “Everyone should stay calm and stay away from the house in case there are aftershocks.”

“Dad!”

“I’ll be fine, Maru. But it’s better that only one of us risks it.”

Robin folded her arms and gave her husband a critical look. “Grab the emergency bag on your way out? It’s in the hallway next to Seb’s room.” 

“Yes, dear.”

“We’ll start walking,” Lydia suggested, giving Stiles a meaningful look.

“Are you sure Stiles can - I mean, maybe you should stay here and rest,” said Sebastian, giving Stiles a worried once-over. “You look like hell.”

“Thanks,” Stiles said, working up a tired grin. Sebastian pinked and looked away.

“If we’re going north I’ll take the mountain path home - it’s on my way,” Stiles said, trying to sound calmer than he felt. He really didn’t want to parade through the village like this - that route would require him to walk right past Hale General. If Derek had flipped out when Stiles was attacked by slimes, Stiles could guess how the guy would respond to another near-death experience in the mines.

Lydia fell into step beside Stiles, earning a dirty look from Sebastian. He walked with his mother, who paused at the hilltop overlooking their yard to give the house a critical look, muttering under her breath about load-bearing beams and joint stability. Lydia and Stiles worked their way up the hill, pausing when another tremble went through the ground beneath them.

Stiles fanned his senses out, but this tremor seemed to be natural in origin. There was no hint of the ozone-layer magical tingle that came with the first major shake. “I know you’re not just another human,” Lydia said softly, completely ruining Stiles’ concentration.

“Wh, wh--”

Lydia pressed her hands to her hips, standing akimbo. “I felt you in the mines, last spring. I - I have a tendency to…” she looked away, her confidence melting away as she put words to what she was. “Sense trauma. Trauma of the near-death variety.”

Stiles tilted his head, flipping through his mental rolodex of creatures able to sense pain, trauma, or death. Most were disfigured and visibly non-human; Lydia’s perfect beauty narrowed the list down substantially. Add to that her brassy red hair and the guess was easy. “That makes you - banshee?”

If Lydia was impressed her expression didn’t change in the slightest. “Well guessed.”

Stiles hadn’t known a banshee personally, but he was familiar with their skills - their actual skills, not what the modern media assigned to them in summer horror blockbusters. “You sensed the slime-attack, then?”

“I did. But I was closer to screaming, today. Are you a wizard?”

A sheepish smile slid across Stiles’ face. “Just a spark,” he confessed. “Nowhere near Deaton’s level of ability. I’m good with living things, ley lines, channeling extant magic. My inner flame is less of a bonfire and more of a candle.”

“A spark,” Lydia repeated, thoughtfully. “Interesting. We don’t have a spark yet.”

They reached the top of the path where Stiles would normally hang a left and walk the western mountain path down to his farm through the rolling foothills that overlooked town. As they paused to survey the damage, Sebastian and Robin caught up. Sebastian was red-faced and puffing, though his uber-fit mother was completely unaffected.

“Too many LAN parties,” Stiles teased Sebastian, who flipped him the bird. His cheeks were bright red, and Stiles wondered with interest if he was warm or actually blushing. He’d clearly made more of an impact on Sebastian than he’d realized. They guy was cute in a gothy sort of way - though Stiles wasn’t sure he could ever date a smoker.

Stiles filed _that_ little fact away for future consideration.

“The path,” Robin gasped, making Stiles look up.

“Yeah,” Lydia agreed. “That’s - that’s … actually great!”

Stiles’ eyebrows shot upwards. Where there had once been a massive boulder and a cascade of smaller stones and dirt, now the boulder laid wedged in a gully, braced in place by trees and another stone outcropping, while the scattered debris had poured out in little rivers, cutting down the hillside like wine from an unstoppered bottle. What was left was a short, narrow cut in the hillside that opened up into another wide clearing in the middle-distance.

“Wait,” Stiles said, slowly. “Did the landslide actually _clear_ a path?”

“This used to be the road to the train depot,” Sebastian said, eyebrows quirking. “It’s been blocked for a few years, though. We didn’t have the machine-power to clear the path.”

“More importantly, it’s the path to the old hot springs!” Maru interrupted, grinning.

“If it’s been blocked for so long, why didn’t you just cut another road?” Stiles asked, quizzically. 

“The last quake shifted the layers of sediment and shifted the water flow,” Demetrius answered. “The town decided that it wasn’t worth it to dig the path out with the springs dried up. The trains from the city bypassed us a few years ago, and without the income of the hot springs carving a new path was pointless.”

“Do you think this quake might have unblocked the spring…?” Sebastian asked, wistfully. 

“God, I missed being able to soak my muscles after a long day’s work,” his mother groaned. She rubbed at one bicep, gazing longingly up the path.

“There’s only one way to find out,” Demetrius reasoned. “But let’s check soil stability first. There’s no sense getting ourselves squashed in the next aftershock just because we’re feeling curious.”

•○•

Much to Stiles’ surprise, Lydia walked him home. There had certainly been a point in his life when the company of such an ethereally gorgeous redhead on his arm would have fed his awkward, single soul - but after a few years moving in supernatural circles he had become accustomed to the superhumanly gorgeous.

Besides, Stiles had always been a hyper-focused kind of guy - and at the moment his focus was focused decidedly elsewhere.

“So,” Stiles said, as they walked along the mountain path to the north of town, wondering where to begin.

“So,” Lydia said in return, quirking a carefully-manicured brow at him. 

“Are you really studying geological aberrations?” he asked, bluntly.

“Well, yes. But also ley lines,” Lydia said, shrugging.

“I _knew_ it,” Stiles muttered to himself - though really, he’d had no idea.

“You didn’t,” Lydia said, words accompanied by a smug smirk.

“So you’re, what? Pretending to be studying one thing while actually studying another? Or - is Demetrius in the loop too?”

“I’m doing the mundane side of my work with him, and then taking supplemental readings as we go to measure the material’s supernatural conductivity. Beacon Hills has always been a hotspot for the supernatural. If you’ve spent any time in the woods you’ve probably noticed the - “

“Forrest sprites?” Stiles interrupted, excited to talk to someone about the more magical aspects of his new life. “They’re all over the southern reaches of my farm. Also, I met the slimes and the weird black walker things in the mines. There’s a lot going on down there.”

“In more ways than one,” Lydia agreed. A brief shadow flickered over her face. “If there was a cave-in at the mines it may be impossible to continue my research.”

“I won’t let that happen,” Stiles said, quickly. Mother nature was a powerful force, but he knew and liked Lydia. He wanted more than that for her. “A little magic is all it would take to restabilize the walls of the place.”

Lydia gave him the side-eye. “Deaton doesn’t typically interfere with human events - or really much of anything in the village. Or are you volunteering?”

Stiles paused at the sight of a patch of spice berries, round and fragrant in the warm afternoon sun. He slung his bag around and fished out a patch of cloth, picking the berries and dropping them into the reusable wrappings.

“Sparks don’t have the same hang-ups about interfering in mundane affairs,” Stiles admitted, wiping berry juice on his jeans. “We’re much closer to human than wizards are. I’ve been tracking the weird fluxes in the local magic since I got here. I’m worried about how it will affect my farm.”

“You have?” Lydia’s interest was definitely piqued. “What kind of tracking? I can measure and sense the local ley lines, but I can’t manipulate them or run any tests that are magical in nature.” 

“That’s ironic,” Stiles said, tucking the berries away and laughing. “All I can do is the exact opposite. I know all about how the tainted energy is impacting my magic and my farm, but I have no way of knowing if it’s my overactive imagination or there’s really something tampering with the flow of power in Stardew Valley. I’d been hoping to corner you and talk about your research to see if those aberrations might be linked, somehow.”

“There’s really something happening,” Lydia said quietly, taking his arm again as they resumed their walk. “But I don’t have any idea what it could be.”

“Did you feel that wave of energy when the quake first rolled through?” Stiles asked, shivering at the memory of drowning in magic and the intense fear of drowning in collapsed stone that had accompanied it. 

Lydia nodded quickly. “I thought the quake might have been sparked by a magical practitioner.”

“If it was, it was set off by someone a hell of a lot more powerful than I am,” Stiles muttered with a frown. “Earth magic is hard to work with. There’s _so much of it_. People give fire a bad rap for being all unquenchable and strong, but the earth is enormous and a lot of it is latently super-charged. Channeling that into a quake would require a powerful wizard, possibly even a group of them.”

“I think we would have noticed a group of wizards in the valley,” Lydia muttered, mulling the words over with a frown on her cupid’s bow lips. 

Stiles considered that. “It’s hard to believe anyone would wish quakes on such a tiny town. Once we figure out where the epicenter is we may have a better idea of what they were aiming for - if anything.”

“And it’s still possible that it was a normal quake,” Lydia said, as though reminding herself. 

Stiles nodded - though he’d lived through plenty a quake growing up in California, and none of them had been accompanied by a power surge like the one he’d felt that afternoon.

“There’s nothing else that could cause that kind of magical splash?”

Stiles worried his lower lip with his teeth. “I suppose it could have been set off with some kind of item or artifact. It would have to be something very old and very powerful, but there are definitely objects out there that could pull off that kind of low-powered seismic event.

“Any anyone can use an object like that? You don’t have to be a magical creature, or a practitioner?”

“Well,” Stiles said with a wince. “Strictly speaking most supernatural governing bodies frown on making all-access magical artifacts. It’s difficult to tell people they can and can’t store power in their own homes, but most covens an regulatory bodies insist that anything more powerful than a firecracker be magically encoded so that only a set number of people may use or open it. If it _is_ an object the user would have three options - make it themselves, acquire something so old it was never locked to a specific magical fingerprint, or buy it on the black market from a greedy practitioner without any damn sense.”

Lydia gave Stiles a thoughtful look as he spoke. “Are you sure you’re just a spark?” she asked, hiking an eyebrow skeptically.

“‘Just’?” Stiles made a face at the familiar sentiment. Sparks were never taken as seriously as the witches and wizards of the world. “A spark is plenty to be, Lydia.”

“You don’t -” she narrowed her eyes at him. “You don’t feel entirely like a spark.”

It wasn’t the first time Stiles had been told something along these lines. He fit into magical circles about as well as he fit into mundane ones. He was eternally doomed to being the outsider, not quite what people expected, not fitting neatly into any role. 

“Well, my dad doesn’t have any abilities, and my mother never manifested any magic as far as either of us know. When I hit puberty and started accidentally lighting shit on fire when I got nervous, dad got really curious - but by then my mom had passed, so a lot of questions went unanswered.”

“It could be a recessive trait,” Lydia said thoughtfully. They turned the final corner towards the Stilinski farm and walked until the land opened up onto Stiles’ neatly planted fields.

He glanced sideways at Lydia and, much to his surprise, found her expression was one of grudging respect.

“It looks good,” she admitted, quietly. “Very different than the last time I was here.”

“The land agrees with me,” Stiles admitted. “I’ve always been better at life magics than the flashy, fancy stuff.”

“I see,” Lydia murmured. Stiles wondered when the last time she’d visited his farm had been. It may very well have been his grandfather’s funeral.

“Thanks for the company,” Stiles told her, feeling suddenly awkward.

“Thanks for the intel,” Lydia said in return, smiling at him. She held out one hand palm-up, flashing her pale pink nails. “Here - give me your phone.”

Stiles dug the device out of his pocket, wiping the dirty screen on the breast of his shirt before self-consciously handing the phone over to Lydia. She tapped in her numbers and then called herself. “I’m going to call you tomorrow,” she told him. “I’ve been trying to convince Deaton to do a magical trace on the strange pollutant in the ley lines, but he’s completely refused to help.”

“Wizards,” Stiles groaned, rolling his eyes. Lydia nodded in agreement, her eyes flashing in a way that did not bode well for Deaton in the long-term.

“We can cast it on the new moon, when the interference will be minimal.”

“New moon?” Stiles repeated, furrowing his brow in thought. “That’s in three days.”

“Exactly. The sooner the better - we have to do it now or we’ll miss our window.”

“I’m not sure I have what I need to perform an impromptu magical trace,” Stiles muttered. “I’ve never done one before. I was planning to do something more like an invocation, asking the local area for guidance.”

“Surely you keep a spellbook,” Lydia pressed.

“No! I’m a spark! We do more - you know. Hippie-dippie say-what-you-feel type spellwork. Wizards are the bubble-bubble-toil-and-trouble types,” Stiles admitted. Matt, his ex, had always mocked his spark magic. Practiced sparks usually had familiar phrases and sayings, pieces of spellwork and poetry that they’d learned to associate with a specific type of magic - a gifted spark could cast spells that sounded like music. Stiles had once known someone whose shielding spell involved reciting part of Pink Floyd’s _Another Brick In The Wall_. He’d always wondered if the guy really knew what the song was about.

“So just _feel_ a magical trace,” Lydia suggested, arms akimbo and expression skeptical. “I didn’t walk you all the way home just to have you turn me down, Stilinski.”

“I should have known you had ulterior motives for hanging out with me,” Stiles said with a sigh. “I’m happy to try. I’d been considering something similar, though the trace sounds better than a summoning spell. It's entirely possible the spirits won't have noticed what's going on.” The genius loci certainly knew what was going on - but Stiles wasn't quite ready to share that information with Lydia. Hopefully his spark was recovered enough to perform a both magical acts.

“Is there anything I should bring?” Lydia asked, thoughtfully. “I know wizards like to use crystals and minerals for focus.”

Stiles stuck out a hand and made a more-or-less gesture. Sparks could use foci, but they were generally less effective. “It’s not a bad idea. If nothing else, a stone from deep within the earth in the valley would help define the range of the trace, keep the inquiry to the surrounding areas. It would have to be something strongly associated with the town, ideally something out of the mines - I was looking for foci today, actually. Before the quake hit.”

He made a face at the memory. His hair and clothes and nails were still filthy - he was going to have to shake everything out on his front stoop before heading inside.

“Well, check through and see what you need. Believe me,” Lydia said sweetly. “If there’s one thing I can provide, it’s rock samples.”

“Great,” said Stiles, smiling. “Three days, then - it’s a date. I mean - not a date-date, obviously! Cora would murder me and toss my body into the sea.”

Lydia laughed. “We’re that obvious?”

“I get a feel for things, sometimes.” It was never a very good feel - but you didn’t have to be a genius to notice the way Lydia and Cora had splashed together on the beach at the luau. The quantity of bouncing bikini bodies and sensual sunscreen-applications had nearly tipped Stiles into another crisis of sexuality.

Lydia derailed the warm, sunshiny memory with a simple question issued in a tone so syrupy sweet it could give a man cavities. “Then why haven’t you asked Derek out?” 

“Wh--what?”

“Derek. Hale. The hunky guy you follow around like a puppy and ply with gifts.” Lydia said, ticking her points off on her fingers.

Stiles went hot all over and cleared his throat, mouth suddenly dry. God, was he as obvious as Lydia and Cora? “I don’t…”

“Stiles,” Lydia said, smirking. “You _do_. Sebastian complains about it all the time - he’s got a thing for you, and you’ve resigned him to star-crossed limbo while you pine for your brawny delivery boy.”

“I -- you can’t -- he doesn’t --” God, why were words so hard? And now Lydia was _laughing_ at him. She was going to be the _worst_ friend, he could already tell.

“See you in three days,” Lydia said sweetly, tossing her strawberry blonde hair as she turned on one heel and sauntered back towards town.

•○•


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in updates, friends. Have an extra-long chapter to help make up for the wait!

•○•

**...:Year 1, Summer 16:…**

•○•

Cora had her shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows and was half-soaked in dirty water when Derek brought up Beacon Hills University. They were in the garage-turned-produce-processing shed out behind the shop, plowing through fifteen crates of fresh tomatoes.

The crop-washer was a noisy piece of machinery, with a wide conveyor belt that fed fruit and vegetables through a series of archways studded with high-powered hoses. All it took was one run through the machine to spray away the dust and fertilizer, rendering their produce clean and table-ready. Derek was on loading duty, spreading the bright red fruit evenly across the belt, while Cora plucked them from the opposite end and dropped them into broad plastic shipping containers. 

It was only when they’d worked through half the load and taken a break for lunch that Derek cleared his throat and spoke. “I have savings.”

Cora was sitting beside him on the stacked sacks of seed that lined the wall of the shed. She paused with her sandwich halfway between the folded paper lunch sack and her mouth. “I…. What?”

“I’ve been saving up since I started at the store,” Derek clarified, not meeting her eyes. Instead, he studied the dripping nozzles of the produce pressure-washer as though they were the most interesting thing in the world. “And you know... I do a lot of odd jobs. And living with mom and dad, I don’t pay rent.”

“Derek…”

“So -- what I’m saying is – if you were to need money for anything…”

Cora crumpled up the paper lunch sack with one hand, and hurled it at Derek’s head. “Laura told,” she groaned, flopping back against the stacks of seed.

Derek winced and tore his eyes away from the machinery, turning to look seriously at Cora. “She didn’t tell – I just overheard you talking about it. I didn’t mean to.”

He could tell by the expression on Cora’s face that she was simultaneously pissed off and relieved that Derek knew her secret. “I don’t want your money,” she said, firmly.

“I know you don’t,” Derek said, forcing the words out, despite how uncomfortable they made him. He’d never been very good at the whole emotional-availability-open-sharing thing, and Cora was very much like him in that regard. Of all the Hale siblings, they were the least qualified to talk about their feelings next to a dripping power-washer. “But - look. I was saving for something, but I missed my window and it’s not happening. I don’t need the money, and I want to use it for something good with it. If you don’t want to ask mom and dad for help right now, you can ask me.”

Cora let out a disgruntled huff, but glanced at him sideways. Their eyes caught and she sighed, turning to face Derek full-on. “What were you saving for?” she asked.

“What?” Derek asked, startled.

“What was the thing-that-didn’t-happen?”

He looked away. “Does it matter if it didn’t happen?”

Cora rolled her eyes skyward as though Derek’s words were physically painful. “Um, yes, obviously it was important to you, so…”

“I was going to buy some property,” Derek admitted with a half-shrug. “I thought it was time to get out on my own. Find a place. Maybe date a little, without having to take someone home to my freaking baby-blue bedroom next to mom and dad’s. But it didn’t work out.”

“It didn’t…” Cora trailed off, then – as Derek had feared they would – her eyes flew wide and she chuffed out a disbelieving laugh. “Ohmygod - you were _totally_ going to buy the Stilinski farm!”

Derek felt his face go hot. He’d considered plenty of different responses, but he hadn’t thought Cora would _laugh_ at him. “Ha ha,” he ground out. “Me, a homeowner. What a ridiculous fucking concept.”

“I’m – I’m not really laughing at – I’m sorry,” Cora flailed. Derek shifted and started to stand, but her hands flung out and snagged his wrist as he moved. “I’m sorry, D. You surprised me, and then I was surprised that it surprised me. It’s so obvious – you’ve always loved that farm.”

Cora tugged him down again, but Derek set his jaw and pulled away. “It doesn’t matter now.”

His sister bit her lip. “Is that why you were such a dick to Stiles when he first came to town?”

Derek folded his arms over his chest and looked away.

“Ohhhhh my god, _everything_ makes so much more sense now,” Cora said slowly, running her hands through her hair, her half-eaten sandwich balanced on her knee. 

“Look, do you want the money or not?” Derek asked her, scowling deeply. 

It wasn’t fair of to be annoyed that she knew his secret, when he’d overheard hers at the luau – but the loss of the Stilinski farm still felt rough and raw, even though it had never been his to begin with. His dreams had been simple - and failing to achieve them felt like a kick in the teeth.

“I – I still haven’t decided if I’m going,” Cora confessed, looking away.

“Well, when you make up your mind, let me know,” Derek said moving back over to the crop-washer. He shoved the power switch to the on position before Cora could say anything more, and let the rumble and whoosh of the machinery drown out her reply.

•○•

**...:Year 1, Summer 17:…**

•○•

Summer days on the Stilinski farm were long, hot, and painfully arduous. In Spring, Stiles had slowly built up the number of crops he’d planted, clearing the fields and going for crops with a quick turnaround time and low initial cost. Spring had been profitable, and he’d made a point of expanding the amount of viable land on his farm - but that also meant that a much greater portion of his time was spent tending to his thirsty crops of corn, melons, blueberries, and hot red peppers.

Stiles picked up three new chicks from Marnie, bringing his total up to four - but they’d be hungry all winter. He knew that once the snows arrived in earnest, the hens would no longer be able to spend each day pecking through the grasses surrounding their coop. He’d need to spend the fall cutting hay for animal fodder, and in order to store grains he needed to build a proper silo.

Robin was busy repairing roofs and surveying homes after the quake, but she’d made the time to do a quick survey and stake out the edges of what would soon be a silo for grain storage. Progress was slow but steady - and Stiles was happy to make hay while the sun shone.

The days were so full that he barely had time to prepare for the spells he and Lydia would be casting. His days began and six, the morning spent watering crops and feeding the hensbefore breaking for lunch in the shade.

Derek had resumed his regular visits, much to Stiles’ relief. Whatever weirdness had cropped up - haha, farm jokes - between them after Stiles’ first near-miss in the mines had dissipated like fog under the heat of the summer sun. Stiles found himself once again hanging over the fence to chat with Derek each morning, drinking in the sight of his toned, tanned shoulders. 

The heat meant no more sexy leather jacket - but Derek Hale in a black undershirt and tight jeans was still the stuff of wet dreams.

Stiles spent most afternoons puttering around town, gifting away his extra crops and picking up items at Hale General. In the evenings he’d taken to fishing, standing knee-deep in surf down at beach, or settled under a tree alongside the lake in the Cindersap woods. He occasionally spotted glimpses of the Hale clan moving back and forth along the path between the trees - and once Derek had even brought out beers, sitting with him as the sun sank behind dark trees and left the entire world painted in grays and purples.

Stiles took a detour on the night before the new moon. He slung his fishing pole over one shoulder and picked his way through the lowest-hanging tree branches. Summer brought fireflies, and Stiles watched with delight as they dipped and bobbed through the woods, twinkling like stars reflected in the surface of a lake. Crickets and cicadas burr-burr-burred in the background, a quiet white noise that drowned out the noisy thoughts in Stiles’ brain.

A year ago he’d spent every daylit hour hunched over a desk, tapping his life away at a black plastic keyboard in an office without windows. He’d been so focused on the future he’d chosen as an inexperienced freshman. He was nerdy, loved video games, enjoyed technical problem solving - and everyone knew there was no money in magic. Work as a programmer seemed like low-hanging fruit. It was a relatively lucrative profession that didn’t require Stiles to sell or sweat or try too terribly hard. 

And yet - he couldn’t think of a time when programming had made him feel happy. There was joy in solving problems and streamlining code, but none of it gave him the gut-deep sense of satisfaction he felt when he pulled a sweet, round tomato from the vine and took a bite, knowing he’d _grown_ something, coaxed something new and life-sustaining into existence.

It made him wonder what other opportunities he had ignored while he desperately chased on a future that barely suited him.

It was easy to fall into routine and to live your life in a certain way just because that was the way you’d always done it, but there were plenty of ways a life could be lived. If the farm stopped making him happy… he’d just reinvent himself again. 

He knew he could do it. He’d already succeeded.

Stiles allowed his second-sight to activate as the woods grew darker, rendering the dim scenery visible with familiar, glittering inner light. That little hint of magic let him see the outlines of the Cindersap forest sprites clinging to the branches above like weird magical fruits. They clumped up at the base of trees and occasionally rolled across the path before him, excited by his presence at such a late hour. 

Stiles padded along the path, content to contemplate quietly until he reached the warded clearing that surrounded Deaton’s tower-home. Once there, he gently brushed the wards with his magic in the supernatural equivalent of ringing the doorbell.

When the wards neither sparked nor protested his touch, Stiles crossed the invisible line and sauntered up to the tower’s entrance. Deaton had the doors and windows open to the cooler evening air, and the distant scents of sandalwood and an open fire lingered as Stiles climbed the steps. “Deaton?” Stiles called out, just in case he was interrupting some critical point of magical effort. “Are you home?”

Deaton was indeed home, and not actually spellcasting. When Stiles poked his head around the corner of the doorway, he saw that the sandalwood smoke swirled up from a stick of perfectly ordinary store-bought incense burning on the mantle. Deaton himself sat by the fire with his sleeves rolled up, stirring a cauldron of what smelled suspiciously like chicken soup.

Stiles raised a brow at the bowl of broth. “Hey, man. Am I interrupting dinner?”

“Not at all,” Deaton said easily, leaning back and smiling impassively at his visitor. “You’re looking well, Stiles.”

Entering the room, Stiles snagged one of the velvet-covered dining chairs from Deaton’s little table and spun it backwards, hooking his arms arms over the back as he sat. He hadn’t seen Deaton for a few weeks - not since he’d gotten a clean bill of magical health after the bitey-blob incident down in the mines. “Better than the last time you saw me, I hope.”

“That’s certainly true. Your power levels feel like they’re back to normal - or have you injured your metaphysical self in some other new and creative way?”

Stiles waved that idea away. “I like to space out my near-death experiences whenever possible. Give me a few weeks, I’m sure I’ll be back.”

“So this is a social call.” Deaton looked skeptical - and rightly so. Stiles hadn’t sought him out for the sake of pure company since he first moved to town.

Then again, _wizard._ If Deaton wanted regular visitors he’d live in town instead of having built a lonely tower along the far edge of the wood. It’s not like the swung by the farm to say hello.

“More like an information-gathering mission,” Stiles admitted. “I wanted to talk to you about the earthquake on Monday.”

“Ah,” Deaton said, nodding thoughtfully. “That follows.” 

Stiles leaned forward, a frown tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I was pretty close to the epicenter when the quake went off,” he told Deaton, studying his face for any reaction. “I was just leaving the mines after a day of digging.

Deaton’s eyebrows twitched upwards, though his face otherwise remained a neutral mask. “You were in the mines?”

“Yup.”

“Again?”

“Yup.”

“And you nearly died?

“Well - ”

“Again?”

Stiles grimaced. “Nothing actually collapsed, jeez. Chris says that the mine shafts are mostly intact, but the lift is busted and he needs to send in Demetrius to test the stability of the areas still propped up with wood before - aaaand that is all totally beside the point.” 

Stiles reeled his attention back in; he couldn’t afford to be distracted by Alan Deaton’s judgemental eyebrows.

“The material point is - where were you when the quake went off?”

Up went the eyebrows. “Here, of course, working.”

“Did you get much shaking on this side of town?”

“I lost a few roof tiles, and one of the trees in the deep woods split in two,” Deaton reported, turning to stir his soup. “Are you working out my alibi, Stiles?”

Stiles winced - okay, so maybe he could have been a bit more subtle there. Then again, there was no real point in trying to lie to Deaton. Stiles’ inner energy tended to reflect his emotions and intentions to anyone who knew how to read the signs. Deaton would certainly have sensed the tinge of suspicion that inspired this line of questioning.

“Why would you need an alibi?” he tried. That wasn’t a lie - but it also wasn’t an answer.

Deaton snorted. “Because you felt the wave of magical intent that accompanied the quake, and I’m the only settled mage in town.”

Stiles felt his cheeks go hot. Okay - so they were doing this in the _most awkward way possible_. Where was the cagey, indirect Deaton he’d grown to know and love?? “You - can you blame me for being curious?”

“I suppose not. You’re quite sensitive, for a spark.”

“Hey,” Stiles muttered half-heartedly. Wizards were so high and mighty when it came to magic - as if they were the only ones in the world with the senses or skills needed to suss out magical events. “It’s hard not to notice when the roof is raining down around your ears.”

“I think you need to stop visiting the mines,” Deaton observed, drily.

“Yeah, you and Derek both,” Stiles muttered, rolling his eyes. “Come on. Focus, man. The quake - it felt like a man-made event, not something natural. Are you not the slightest bit worried that some asshole is causing epic natural disasters in Stardew Valley?”

Deaton’s soup-stirring paused - Stiles would have given his left arm to know what the guy was thinking. “I felt it too, though it was quite faint this far away from the epicenter.”

“So you agree that it was a magically-induced event. You’re the only person I know of in the Valley powerful enough to set off an earthquake. Are there any other wizards rattling around yonder hills?” 

Deaton pursed his lips in a way that meant he was thinking - and most likely thinking of how to answer Stiles without actually giving away any relevant information. Stiles hated that expression.

“There are lots of magical entities in the valley,” Deaton said, slowly. “The area has always drawn in the supernatural folk - the ley lines are close to the surface, the forests are healthy, their spirits active. There’s been no shortage of practitioners moving through the area over the years.”

“Are you the only permanently settled wizard around?”

“Yes,” Deaton said, firmly. “Though there are others, some as powerful as you, who make their home here. With the right combination of spells, even you could spark an event like an earthquake.”

Stiles groaned. “Wizards aren’t allowed to make spark jokes.”

Deaton’s smile was implacable, as though he hadn’t just murdered Stiles’ will to live with a pun.

“But are any of them - I don’t know, filled with evil and vitriol and willing to shake the valley to its core?”

“That’s another question, isn’t it,” Deaton said philosophically. 

_Ugh_. Sensing a dead-end, Stiles lapsed into annoyed silence as Deaton stirred the pot, clearing his thoughts and refocusing himself. 

“I’m planning to run a series of spells tonight,” Stiles said, watching Deaton carefully. 

“New moon spells,” Deaton said, looking at him sharply.

“I’m summoning the forest spirits, in case they’ve witnessed something beyond the average human encroachment in the past few years.”

Deaton did indeed begin to look interested - though of course in his own unhelpful way he perked up at the most uninteresting part of the plan. “You’re speaking to the forest spirits?” 

Stiles’ eyebrows shot upwards. “Of course I do. My farm is covered with them.”

“When did they first make themselves visible to you?”

He wrinkled his nose, thinking back. His first few weeks on the farm had been a blur of exhaustion and new faces - it was hard to recall when he’d first noticed the sprites. “Honestly, I think they were there the first moment I case a circle. They’re so much more active than any spirits in the city - I noticed them immediately.”

Deaton nodded, slowly. “And do they speak to you directly, or just observe as you work and cast?”

“They’ve spoken to me a bit, but it’s usually pretty confusing. For the most part they just tag along and do … I don’t know. Whatever it is forest-y spirits do in their spare time.”

“I imagine they were glad to see you,” Deaton said, smiling in that weird, faint way of his. 

“Yeah, right.”

“I’m quite sincere, Stiles. They’ve always loved your farm, ever since - ever since your grandfather’s younger days. I’m sure they were thrilled to see it up and running again, producing good and healthy crops. Farmland is happiest when its producing, just as forests are happiest when managed by the local pack.”

 _Local pack._ Stiles opened his mouth once again but Deaton raised a pre-emptive and silencing finger. “Before you ask, you know I’m sworn to neutrality, and I cannot tip the scales of the universe in favor of one actor without assisting another in turn. The business of wolves is the business of wolves. Just as I would never share the details of your abilities with another.”

Irritation flared up within Stiles. Neutrality was fine in theory, but it was hard to believe Deaton could sit around refusing to act when the entire town was in danger. Someone was setting off _literal earthquakes_. “Even if the ‘other’ is a malicious mage poisoning the ley lines beneath your home?”

“Death is as much a part of the cycle as birth,” Deaton said, calmly. “We tend to find endings more painful than beginnings, but without endings a beginning can never take root.”

Stiles wondered if Deaton practiced this shit in the mirror each morning. “I’ve answered your questions about the sprites,” he pointed out. “I’ve given you information, and been denied information in return. That doesn’t feel very balanced.”

Deaton frowned at him, squinting as though considering the point. After a long moment of thought he answered slowly, carefully meting out each parcel of information. “The quake was cast by a person, skill amplified by an artifact. It felt targeted - as though the energy had a purpose and focus beyond simple damage.”

Stiles nearly fell over. Had that neutral-balance-the-scales bullshit actually _worked?_ Was what he’d shared about the forest sprites worth such direct information? Deaton never revealed more than he had to, and yet…

“That’s...good to know. Did you sprain something, letting that slip?”

Deaton rolled his eyes. ‘What can I say? I’m interested in the well-being of the forest sprites. They stopped speaking to me quite some time ago. As you know, a healthy forest should be teeming with sprites - it’s not clear if they’ve grown inured to my presence or if they have simply grown weaker and fewer in numbers as humans encroach on the land.”

Stiles thought back to the shimmering outlines he waved at while walking through the forest that evening. They’d basically been countless - if that was a low number of sprites, what would the place have looked like in its prime?

He’d apparently stumbled on valuable information without realizing it, and would need to be more careful with what he revealed. Or - perhaps Deaton was merely creating an excuse to share information? Was offering Stiles trades his way of bypassing the rules about neutrality?

Or - well. It was possible they found Deaton as frustrating as Stiles did. That thought had him swallowing back a smirk. Wizards might be high and mighty - but the spirits of the land loved Stiles, and Stiles loved them right back.

“I can keep you posted on the sprite situation,” Stiles said, simply. 

“That would be helpful,” Deaton said, nodding in appreciation. “In the meantime, I’ve ended up with a surplus of wormwood and calamus root, if you might have a use for them.”

Stiles blinked. Wormwood was a summoning herb, and calamus added strength and protection to any circle in which it was burned. They would be supremely useful in his summoning spells that very night.

“Uh - sure. I can probably find a use for them. Thanks, Deaton,” he said, watching Deaton’s practiced hands tamping out portions of dried herbs into two small glass vials, which were summarily corked and shoved into Stiles’ outstretched hands.

Deaton smiled at him. “My pleasure, Stiles. I’m glad we understand one another.”

“Me too,” Stiles said, smiling right back.

•○•

On the night of the new moon Lydia showed up at the farm, eyes bright and hair flowing freely in auburn coils down her back. She was more rumpled than usual - rumpled enough that Stiles half-suspected Cora had pounced on her in a cornfield on her way to the farm. He kept mum, though. Cora was a private person, and if Lydia had shared her secret with Stiles it was only because he had unwittingly shared his own secret with her.

That level of mutually-assured-destruction had apparently - against all odds - left them in a position suspiciously close to friendly.

One of Stiles’ plans for farm improvement involved installing proper lights along the pathway to the house, and motion-triggered lights out in the field that might frighten away deer and other hungry forrest creatures. At this stage, those plans were a distant dream - which meant the farm was still impossibly dark, the pathway through the fields and into the scrubby woodland at the edge of the tilled land was lit only by Stiles’ old kerosene lantern and the light from Lydia’s phone flash. 

As was his habit, Stiles let the magic creep into the corners of his vision. Lydia looked startled when he met her gaze.

“Stiles…” Lydia muttered, squinting hard at his face.

“What?” Stiles asked, so surprised that he lost his concentration and with it his sight. “Wait - you can tell when I’m using my sight?”

“It’s kind of obvious,” Lydia muttered. “Your eyes are glowing green.”

“That - that must be a banshee thing. Noticing it, I mean,” Stiles told her, shrugging self-consciously. He’d never known his eyes to glow with any sort of spellcasting. 

“Don’t tell me what is and isn’t a banshee thing,” Lydia said sharply. “I’ve never seen anything like that before. And I’ve seen Deaton cast plenty of times over the years.”

“My eyes don’t glow!” Stiles said, exasperated.

“They do,” Lydia informed him, primly. Her expression had shifted from surprised and open to the carefully composed mask she wore in public. It was that mistrustful stare that made Stiles explain himself.

“I mean - they’ve never glowed before! I’m pretty sure _someone_ would have mentioned creepy glowing!” 

The mask cracked, and Lydia bit her lip and raised her phone. “Well - here, do it again. I’ll take your photo.” 

Buzzed with adrenaline, Stiles let his well of internal power flare back into life. He tipped his head back and gazed imperiously at Lydia. Surely no magical energy visible to a banshee would be showing up on an iPhone 10.

When Lydia turned the phone around, Stiles’ mouth fell open in shock.

His eyes - his eyes _were_ glowing. There was a deep golden-green light haloing each eye, and the center of the shimmer was so bright the phone’s screen simply registered it as white. There were golden speckles in the mix, as though motes were suspended all around his body, illuminated by his inner light. 

“Holy shit,” Stiles said, awestruck. “I look like motherfucking _Galadriel_.“

But - what did that mean? It was clearly another manifestation of his power - but that sort of thing usually appeared at puberty. Manifesting physical signs of magical use this late in life was both weird and extremely inconvenient. Stiles enjoyed being able to use his magic ‘under the radar’.

Leave it to Stiles to have remedial pubescent changes in his twenties.

Or - or was there something else at play? Could his spark be supercharging in the calm natural environment of Beacon Hills? Or could it be the residue from Deaton’s treatment after his first near-miss in the mines - an accidental wizardy super-charge?

Lydia let her phone sink back to her side. She kindly didn’t remind Stiles that she’d told him so, but her smugness hung between them anyway.

“I… sorry. That’s new,” Stiles told her, weakly. He stared down at his hands and wondered if there any more surprises in store for him, or was that the sum total of his new super powers? The responsible thing would be to set this project aside until he’d gotten to the bottom of this change, but the idea of waiting for a new moon rankled deeply. 

“Apparently,” Lydia agreed, frowning. “Look - can we just … do this, already?“

Stiles forced himself to exhale, dropping his shoulders and rolling them back to release the tension knotted between his shoulder blades. “Right. I’m sorry. My powers have always been a little unorthodox, and being reminded that you’re a freak gets kind of old.”

“You’re not a freak,” Lydia said, simply. “It’s not your fault people haven’t figured out what you’re capable of. I - I know how that feels.”

She looked away with her arms folded protectively over her torso. It occurred to Stiles that it couldn’t be easy to grow up as a banshee - his powers were, on the whole, centered on light and life and growth. Lydia was a harbinger of death - that _had_ to be tough to get used to.

Stiles resisted the urge to reach out and draw her into a hug and instead spared them both the embarrassment of his effusive, sparky sentiments. Instead he began to sketch the outlines of his sacred circle. 

Casting a circle was second-nature, and the action calmed him immediately. He cut through the soft soil with his fingers and carefully created a space for the five elements to be captured and tapped. Casting on the farm was much easier than doing so at home. He could feel the stirrings of the ley lines beneath as he worked, the native power of the place reaching out to him in anticipation of contact. 

“We have two options,” Stiles said as he dug supplies out of his bag, his voice gone soft and easy. “Option one is your tracing spell. I have one of the grubs that’s living on my property to serve as a sample of tainted energy.” 

He pulled out a jar and squinted at its mutated occupant before handing the polluted specimen to Lydia. She tilted the glass in turn and frowned at the grub.

She dressed like such a girly girl when she wasn’t at work that it was easy to forget she spent all day every day rooting around in the soil and mapping what she found there. It would take more than a grub to scare Lydia Martin.

He continued. “Their development has been impacted by the tainted energy, so I figure following the grub infestation would let us trace to source of the magical impurity.”

Lydia nodded. “And option two?”

“Option two is to tap the spirits for suggestions and follow the metaphysical trail of the taint rather than the physical after-effects. After-effects meaning-”

“The grubs,” Lydia said, quirking a brow at him. “I get it.”

Stiles grinned, delighted. “This poison is more than just physical, and the forest spirits have witnessed the flow. If it’s impacting the magic and the nature surrounding my farm, it’s _definitely_ impacting the local supernatural world.” 

He hoped that sounded at least a little convincing to a non-magic-user. Stiles had seen firsthand how the toxin was infecting the spiritual manifestation of the valley, and while he didn’t know much about genius loci he definitely knew they were strong and rare. There was no telling what someone willing to set off an earthquake would do if they realized it was possible to interact with a being of such ancient magical power. 

“I’d prefer to track the physical,” Lydia said firmly. “I can’t offer any assistance in the supernatural realm. Physical evidence is more my cup of tea.”

“That’s just as well,” Stiles agreed as he staked a spear of incense into the soil. “The last time I tried walking through the metaphysical plane I zapped myself on a set of horrific wards on the other side of town.”

Lydia’s eyebrows shot upwards. “Wards? In town?”

Stiles set out his silver cup and poured a stream of fresh water into its curved bowl. Next came his candle - a glass cylinder with a recessed flame strong enough to withstand the late evening breezes. “At first I thought it was Deaton,” he said absently. “Or the local wolfpack.”

There was a pause before Lydia muttered. “It wouldn’t be the wolfpack.”

Stiles glanced up at her, but her face gave nothing away. He looked away again, unsurprised. It was natural for a supernatural being born and raised in Beacon Hills to protect the identity of the pack.

“After I got chewed on in the mines I met Chris Agent and decided it was probably his family’s work. The adventurer’s guild is warded to the gills, though theirs aren’t malicious. Not like the ones I ran across.”

“And you never bothered to figure out who set them?” Lydia asked, staring incredulously at him.

“He implied it was his sister. And honestly, she gives me terrible vibes. I’ve been avoiding Joja Mart since the day I met her.”

Lydia’s expression tightened. “Kate Argent.”

“Yeah.” Stiles carefully cupped his hand around the incense that represented the element of air, lighting it with a thought. Curls of smoke drifted upwards, but not away. They lingered in the circle, hanging like a halo overhead and earning a nod of satisfaction from Stiles. 

He looked up at Lydia once the circle was cast. 

“Are you ready?”

Lydia looked down at the circle uncertainly. “What do I have to do?”

Stiles smiled and gestured to the circle expanding around him. “Have a seat,” he said, fingertips sparking. “And I’ll show you how I work.”

•○•

**...:Year 1, Summer 21:…**

•○•

“This is a terrible fucking idea,” Lydia hissed. Crouched in the bushes outside the Joja-mart, she resembled a cat in a room full of rocking chairs - totally out of place and incredibly irritated by her situation.

Stiles wore a black hoodie with dark jeans and sunglasses - because he was now, apparently, a Cyclops-esque asshole who wore his sunglasses at night. Asshole or not, if brightly glowing eyes were a new factor of life he’d need a practical way to rein them in. With that in mind he cautiously let his magical senses fan out across the world around him, reaching for any signs of intelligent life. 

“Okay?” he asked, gesturing at the glasses vaguely. Lydia raised one hand and tipped it back and forth to say, so-so. 

“It’s not quite as bright. And I’m not sure how bright it would look to a human. But - be careful if you’re using it inside,” she warned. “You definitely won’t be able to use your sight and hide at the same time.”

“I’ll be careful. Hopefully the building will be totally empty, anyway.”

“Hopefully.” Lydia turned to stare at the empty building once again. Her only concession to the top-secret nature of their mission was to tie her bright red hair back under a dark scarf. She looked like a 1950’s movie star about to film a heist scene.

A silent Joja Mart loomed before them, dark and menacing. Its blank facade appeared dull in the bright light of day, but on a moonless evening it was downright menacing. The surrounding parking lots, paved entry walkway, and grassy verge stretching down towards the highway felt like an oblong scar in the valley. 

There wasn’t a single forrest sprite to be seen, nor were there the strange grassy wisps that Stiles typically associated with healthy prairie or rolling plains. The space was just - dry. Empty. There.

On closer inspection, though, that empty scar lay trembling over something deeper and far, far dirtier. The land was a scabbed over wound. With his magical senses up and running, Stiles felt a toxic, gooey heat warming the soles of his feet.

“I think it’s in the basement of the building,” he told Lydia, brow furrowed.

“Of course it is,” Lydia muttered, folding her slim arms across her chest. The look she gave the Joja Mart was sharp enough to cut glass.

Stiles’ magical vision wreathed Lydia in glittering blue-gray power, a glowing goddess. Hers was a patient, waiting strength. Her energy - which he had tapped to expand the range of his standard tracking spells - had been fierce and independent and difficult to bend to Stiles’ needs. It had cooperated in the end, fueling his spellwork and expanding the range of his senses dramatically. Even so, the effort had been exhausting. Stiles knew he would hurt in the morning.

Weirdly, the use of Lydia’s strength in his spellwork painted the edges of Stiles’ magical sight with a silver tinge that hadn’t yet dissipated. It acted as a sort of pseudo-moonlight, improving his night vision as it clung to the lines of trees and bricks alike.

“The basement windows along the ground,” Stiles observed. “We could sneak around the back and try to slip into the basement.”

“We? I think you mean _you._ ”

“Wh--what?” 

“ _I’m_ not going to break into a shitty country Joja Mart,” Lydia informed him loftily.

Stiles rolled his eyes. “Could have fooled me. If you’re not coming in, then what the hell are you doing here?”

“I’ll stand watch,” Lydia offered with a delicate shrug. “I promise to scream at you if things are about to go south.”

Crickets chirped in the distance.

“Was - was that a banshee joke?” Stiles whispered, more startled at Lydia’s humor in her own morbid abilities than at the idea of getting himself killed mucking around in the basement of a big box store. 

Joja Mart might actually be the worst place in the world to die - he would never live it down.

“Worry less about my jokes and more about the security cameras,” Lydia suggested sweetly, rolling her eyes and waving Stiles away. The chunk of dead twig caught in the curls of her ponytail somewhat lessened the “cool factor” of the gesture.

Stiles suppressed a smile and turned his sight back on the store, concentrating on the eaves where security cameras were typically hung. He spotted several hanging from the building like mechanical fruit. Once he had an idea of what to look for he found another in the trees opposite the front door, trained on the entrance.

“You’ve got good night vision,” he told Lydia, reluctantly impressed. She hadn’t been forthcoming about what her banshee blood brought to the table, but he strongly suspected that supernatural sight was one of those gifts.

“Or I just pay attention in full daylight,” Lydia countered, habitually glancing down at her nails. The very fact that she could inspect her cuticles on a moonless night proved Stiles’ guess was 100% correct - but he didn’t bother to point that out.

“You wouldn’t be caught dead in Joja Mart,” Stiles said instead, smirking. 

Lydia huffed out a laugh in spite of herself. 

“Come on. Let’s try the back.”

The read of the store was austere and lined with long loading bays. The huge sliding doors began several feet off the ground, allowing 18-wheelers to disgorge themselves of their cargo in the most convenient of fashions. A ramp that cut down into the ground at the eastern end of the building and entered what was clearly the basement level. 

Stiles found five more cameras as they went, including another device perched in the trees and fixed on the rear door.

“I’m going to zap the cameras and try one of the basement windows,” he told Lydia quietly, lifting his fingers and reaching down within himself. She nodded, unsurprised.

Electronics and magic never mixed well. It was only Stiles’ teenage obsession with video games and building PC towers that had taught him - through a lot of painful trial and error - how to reign in his spark in a way that allowed him to play COD with the best of them. 

The very concept of a spark who was also a computer programmer had shocked more than one person he met in the city - but then, Stiles liked to shock.

“Hah,” he muttered to himself, fingers beginning to tingle as he gathered up ambient static electricity in his palm and forced a bit of his own energy into the sizzling orb. “ _Shocked_.”

With a flick of his hand, Stiles released the electricity in five different directions at once. The shocks flickered with luminescence as he sprayed them outwards, using the bit of spark in the core of each to guide them to their marks. The cameras might be shielded against rain and wind, but a touch of static to the right circuit board would be more than enough to incapacitate them.

“Did it work?” Lydia asked. Stiles reached out again with his sight, feeling for the bright currents that always hummed and flickered through electrical devices. 

All he could hear was the tremulous buzz of crickets and other nighttime denizens of the forest. The crackle of electricity had dimmed - which suggested that while the cameras were out, the building at large was still powered.

“I hope so,” Stiles muttered, standing and brushing leaves off the knees of his jeans. “Wish me luck, Lyds.”

Lydia wrinkled her nose at the nickname, but wished it anyway. “Luck.”

Stiles pulled his hoodie over his head and moved as quickly as possible through the open loading bays, feeling painfully exposed beneath the bright fluorescent floodlights. Once he reached the building proper he pressed his body against the stone, forcing himself to pause and take a few deep breaths before continuing along the wall.

The line of basement windows began at the side of the building. He directed another pulse of energy at the camera in the corner, just to be sure - and then edged around and dropped to his knees. The windows weren’t built to be opened from the outside, and lacked any good handholds - but Stiles managed to hook the tips of his fingers under the lip of the frame and push.

Locked.

“Shitty security would have been too much to ask for,” he reminded himself under his breath, dashing a few feet to the right and trying the next window. After the third he made the executive decision to try forcing one open.

Would these windows be alarmed? It was hard to tell. Stiles knew that paranoid mages tended to focus on supernatural threats rather than mundane ones. There was every chance this place was warded inside and out, but lacked even a basic burglar alarm. Whether or not the place had a security system, he wouldn’t spend more than a few minutes nosing around - if the magical item in question was powerful enough to cause an earthquake, it should only take walking through the shielding spells surrounding it to make the culprit painfully obvious.

Stiles placed his hands flat on the glass and summoned up his spark, squeezing his eyes shut as he muttered an impromptu bit of spellwork. He’d always found it more difficult to work on inanimate objects than living things, but the glass was a simple subject, and certainly within his ability to impact.

“ _Clear as day, bright and clean, pane - please take a break for me,_ ” he said, cajoling. The glass pane trembled against his skin, and Stiles felt - rather than saw - his magic slice unnaturally straight lines into its edges. Stiles gingerly pulled his fingers away and the perfect glass rectangle came with it, stuck to his fingertips as though by superglue. He leaned it against the wall next to the window, careful not to damage it further. 

He could spell it back into place once he was done here.

Stiles shone his light down into the now-empty window frame and squinted at what lay beyond. The space behind it looked more like a warehouse than a basement. To make matters more complicated, his point of entry was at least ten feet off the ground. He would have to shimmy his way down the exposed metal shelving if he wanted to explore further - and escape would be difficult to do quietly.

Taking a risk, he pulled his sunglasses down and fanned his second sight into the room. Nothing living pinged on his mental radar, save a few neat rows of what felt like sad, wilting houseplants off to his left. 

Nothing magical turned up, either.

Swallowing back a pang of disappointment, Stiles wondered belatedly if his theory was wrong. If there was something in the basement of the Joja Mart, shouldn’t he feel it from here? Or was the stockroom as fully shielded as the store’s ground level? 

His augmented sight picked out a few more cameras, at least. Stiles closed his eyes, muttered to himself, and sent another few sparkly motes of electricity into the room. The cameras winked out with little puffs of smoke as their processors fell victim to his static-electricity magic missiles.

In a stroke of good luck Stiles had picked a window over a wide industrial shelf that was only half-full. He elected to go in head-first, carefully pushing the rows of food processors to one side and creating space for his lanky limbs to unfold. He managed to get entirely inside and swing his legs over the edge of the shelf without much trouble, then dropped his sight entirely. 

His supernatural gaze was good for a lot of things, but it didn’t fare well when judging depths or distances. If he jumped off a shelf with only the guidance of his second sight, he'd probably break a leg.

The room looked and felt like every retail warehouse he’d ever seen. Not that he’d seen many, other than the grocery store he’d worked at part-time in his high school days. The stockroom was unfinished and slightly grimey, neatly lined with rows of labeled goods and dotted with inexplicable drains set into the floor every few yards.

Stiles listened for alarms, squinted for motion detectors, and then heaved himself forward and dropped to the ground level. The impact sent spikes of tenderness through his knees, and he straightened with a wince. 

Five minutes - he’d explore for five minutes and then head for the hills.

The stockroom took up most of the basement space, and Stiles moved through it as quickly as possible. This would be an area that townies had access to. Even if his magical radar had missed something, Sam and Shane and the others who worked in the shop would probably have noticed any mystical artifacts wedged in between the pool noodles and lawn mowers. 

At the far end of the stock room lay an empty break room, an employee restroom, and two locked offices. One was labeled “GENERAL MANAGER” in ostentatious gold plate. 

Sure enough, when he reached out and placed his hand against the doorway furthest from the warehouse and break room, the skin on his palm sizzled with energy. The portal quivered with a gentle magical hum - with a signature he knew entirely too well.

Wards. _Powerful_ wards, and keystone wards to boot. 

“Shit,” he muttered, snapping his hand back against his chest and rubbing at his tingling palm.

Stiles might be a skilled magic practitioner, but keystone wards were a level of security far beyond his ability. These wards used objects - usually a piece of jewelry worn by the caster or commissioner - to identify those able to enter. The number of objects depended on the amount of security desired. 

Without the presence of the keystone, Stiles’ best efforts would get him absolutely nowhere.

And that meant his foray into breaking and entering was a wasted effort.

Stiles turned away from the door, scowling. He’d been right about Kate Argent hiding something in the store’s basement, but he wasn’t the slightest bit closer to knowing what it was. 

He slid his hands across the other door, but nothing magical pinged his senses. He dropped his hands, feeling roundly defeated. He moved back through the silent hallway, turning the logic of keystone wards over in his mind. Would the keystone be something important and personal, or something innocuous? Would Kate leave it sitting on a shelf in the breakroom, or would it be something she carried with her? If it unlocked the door to the store’s main office, she’d certainly have to have it with her on a daily basis. 

Hell - did keystones even give off a magical aura? He would have to come up with some piece of information about the forest sprites and haggle the details out of Deaton.

Stiles made it all the way to the storeroom before a creak echoed through the silent scene. The sound of it both paralyzed his body sent his heart rate ratcheting skywards. He pressed his body back against the wall and held his breath. 

Shit. Was - was there someone else down here? 

The massive warehouse was as creepy as any horror movie set. The only light filtering through the shelves was from the red exit sign over the doorway - the tall steel shelves cast criss-crossing shadows across the floor.

He swallowed, throat tight. The moonless basement windows were black squares high in the walls. Which one had he come through? He squinted, trying to make out the jumbled food processors he’d shoved out of the way when making his grand entry. It was nearly impossible to discern one stack of boxes from the next in this light - and his newly-glowing eyes meant he’d give his location away if he tried to sense the open window using his magical abilities.

Stiles squeezed his eyes shut against the urge to use his sight anyway. What if he was hearing things? It could just be nerves. What if - 

There was another shuffling step, and Stiles knew he wasn’t imagining it.

He had to get out of there. His magical sight might not be an option, but Stiles had studied the layout of the floor from atop the shelf he’d entered through. The window should be off to his left, maybe three rows in. He’d cleared the boxes on the top shelf to make a path, so that would make his exit clear if he could get close enough to spot it.

He looked around wildly for a distraction, creeping slowly towards the window. After making it another ten feet into the warehouse, he came to a gap between two tall shelves just wide enough for his body if he turned sideways, and stepped into the crevice. The walls created an illusion of safety, and he paused there to listen. At least Stiles wouldn’t be exposed if whomever was down here glanced down this aisle.

Exhaling, a thought occurred to him. - in this dark little corner, with his eyes squeezed shut, he might get away with a spell. It seemed unlikely that he’d have a better opportunity, anyway. Stiles thought wildly about everything he’d seen on his dark journey into the building, and his mind seized upon a small speck of warm life he’d sensed upon scanning the building.

House plants.

Stiles licked his lips. If the last few months had proven anything, it was that plants had a real affinity for his magic. He’d worked hard to grow his crops in the normal human way in order to avoid attention from the town. For the most part his efforts had been successful.

He reached a tendril of magic out towards the house plants and felt them shiver in response to his magic. The touch alone was enough to peak their interest, and Stiles felt a pang of guilt for what he was about to ask them to do.

Squeezing his eyes shut as tightly as he could he willed the spell into existence with his thoughts, _’Ivy, peonie, and fern - give those bolts a good, hard turn.’_

Silence. He felt the plants quivering excitedly in response to his request, and held his breath. 

Then, at the far end of the room, there was a sharp creak.

Footsteps shuffled in response to the noise and Stiles slipped free of his hiding spot, forcing himself to walk gently rather than flee outright. The creak turned into a harsh clank and then there was a long, low scrape as tiny plastic plant containers began to slide towards the ground.

Stiles’ eyes shot upwards, scanning the upper reaches of the shelves. He found the gap in the boxes and gripped the lowest shelf with his hands, hauling himself upwards. Plants began hitting the ground in a series of explosive thuds, showering the floor of the warehouse with cascades of dirt, and he silently prayed that the noise was enough to cover the creak of his own shelving unit as he climbed desperately towards freedom.

His hand hit the top shelf and he hauled himself upwards, metal digging into his gut as he shimmed forward, hands gripping the frame of the glassless window. Behind him there was another crash as a second shelf gave way, the houseplants it carried gleefully committing themselves to the cause.

“Hey!” Stiles heard someone shout. The sound sent a shock of panic through his body and he flailed forward, scrambling until his arms were through the window and he could pull the rest of his body out into the grass beyond.

His elbow slammed into something sharp and Stiles grunted in pain. He was too focused to pay attention to the source of the sudden agony until the discarded glass pane - shattered by his frantic escape attempt - fell again and added a gash on his forearm to his list of complaints. Stiles shoved violently and the broken pane landed in the grass.

At that very moment he felt groping fingers brush one shoe. He kicked out desperately and connected with something soft, a sharp cry echoing behind him. Stiles wasted no time army-crawling himself forward until he could stagger to his feet and start to run.

•○•

**...:Year 1, Summer 24:…**

•○•

Derek stood at the gate to the Stilinski farm with a frown on his face.

The farm was empty, the early-morning breeze gentle and cool, despite the heat the afternoon sun would bring. Stiles was usually up and about at six, and they’d agreed to get an early start, but the man was so far nowhere to be seen. 

It was a bit embarrassing to admit he knew how often Stiles woke and started in at work - Derek had spent far more than his fair share of time “happening across” the Stilinski farm and pausing to watch Stiles work.

Stiles’ silo peeked out above the roofline, climbing upwards in a slow but steady fashion off behind the house. Derek was always impressed by how fast Robin worked – she must have press-ganged Sebastian and his friends to help on some other day. That was no easy feat, as Sebastian and Derek were definitely neck-and-neck for the Most Taciturn Townsperson award. Maybe Stiles had a weak spot for quiet people he could talk over?

Derek frowned at the thought. Stiles was swiftly growing closer to other townsfolk his age and it made Derek feel - frustrated. 

Stiles was a natural fit for that clique considering that Alex, Sebastian and Abigail fell on the nerdier side of the social spectrum. Derek could hardly begrudge Stiles the friends he was making, even if he envied their share of the guy’s attention. 

Giving up his stalker-esque staring, Derek opened the gate and strolled up to the front porch. He knocked on Stiles’ door, then knocked again. It was half-past five already – he turned to squint at the henhouse, wondering if Stiles was already up and collecting his morning eggs.

Before he could move away, the door swung open to reveal a very rumpled, very shirtless Stiles Stilinski. He blinked in the pale dawn light, and the room behind him was dim and cool. Derek’s supernatural senses basked in the comfortable familiarity of the farmhouse, its scent newly tempered with notes that belonged distinctly to Stiles. There was also a sharp, fresh scent of -- 

“What happened to your arm?” Derek asked, brows furrowing. Stiles’ right arm was bandaged from elbow to wrist

“…Derek? What time’sit?” Stiles looked down at his watchless wrist, then rubbed one eye with the heel of his hand. “Sorry, I’m -- totally not awake.”

Derek pulled his phone out and thumbed the home screen - anything was better than staring at a sleep-rumpled Stiles like a dog at a bone. “Five thirty. Seriously, did you get in a fight with your scythe?”

“Something like that,” Stiles muttered. He let forth a ridiculous groan and thumped his head into the doorframe. “ _So early_. How are you even dressed? Nobody should be dressed at this hellish hour.”

“I can…” Derek scowled. “I mean. Weren’t we doing fodder today? Should I go?”

“No!” Stiles yelped, throwing up his hands and then wincing and lowering the bandaged right arm. “No. Don’t go, I’ve commandeered your muscles and now they’re mine to command,” Stiles muttered. “Come in – coffee. Black, sweet coffee, then grass chopping.”

The door swung further open and Stiles waved Derek into the dim interior – Derek inhaled one more gulp of fresh air before stepping across the threshold and into Stiles’ home territory. The house was dark, but Stiles padded forward without hesitation and clicked on a light next to the small TV. 

The house felt familiar in some respects, as though Old Man Stilinski might have just stepped out for a breath of fresh air. The old wooden table was still there, flanked by two creaky chairs. There was a rag-rug and a wooden chest, which had – when Derek was a teen – been used to store farming and mining equipment. Stiles had clearly updated the kitchen with a bigger refrigerator and stove top, and through the doorway to the bedroom Derek caught a glimpse of brand new posters plastered up on the wooden walls.

It was especially odd to see some of the old furniture co-opted and put to new use. The sturdy wooden TV stand was now topped with a flat-screen – and the TV itself sprouted half a dozen cords that hooked into video game consoles. The cozy brick-red blanket was thrown – rather than neatly folded – over the back of the couch and half buried in a rumpled pile of laundry. 

The battered, comfortable old armchair was gone – but that was probably for the best. No one needed to lounge around watching TV in the chair their grandpa died in.

Stiles had hung a few posters on the walls here, too – most looked like bands, though there was definitely a Star Wars poster hanging between the calendar and the television. Derek tried very hard not to find that level of nerdiness charming.

Derek stood awkwardly in the living room for a moment, then made his way to the room’s only table and sat down.

“I like what you’ve done with the place,” he offered, quietly.

“At least someone does,” Stiles muttered, groggily. “I miss water pressure and warm showers.”

Derek frowned and forced himself to fold his hands into his lap and remain quiet, staring around the room. It was the first time he’d been here since Stilinski passed away, and being in the presence of his things made the memories of his life come flooding back.

Derek’s relationship with old man Stilinski had been hard to explain as a teen – but as an adult, he thought he’d worked out what had drawn him to the older man. Derek had an enormous family – and in some ways, an enormous family was almost as lonely as a small one. There had always been someone in the house with problems larger than Derek’s, someone who complained more loudly than Derek. And that had been okay – it wasn’t that he’d felt out of place in his pack, or unloved – he loved his family. It was just that deep down inside, when he’d gotten caught throwing that rock through the greenhouse window, he’d wanted attention. When his mother had issued her sentence and doomed him to a summer of manual labor around the Stilinski property, old man Stilinski had been the one to provide that attention.

He’d treated Derek like a wayward grandchild. He’d asked questions and then listened; he’d offered advice only after asking if Derek actually wanted any. He never assumed that he knew what Derek wanted, or what Derek was thinking. He was a breath of fresh air for a quiet kid perpetually surrounded by noise.

Derek’s eyes shifted over to where the comfortable recliner had once stood. The day he’d found farmer Stilinski cold and still was the most difficult day of his young adult life. He remembered knocking, remembered letting himself in with the spare key. There’d been an end table with a lamp on it. He remembered clicking it on and realizing the farmer wasn’t just asleep in the heat of the afternoon, but -

Gone.

There was a faint ceramic click as Stiles set a steaming mug down in front of Derek, jerking him from his thoughts. The expression on Stiles’ face made Derek think he’d missed something.

“You still with me?” the kid asked, brows hiking slightly. 

“Sure,” said Derek, tugging the warm mug closer to him.

“So… how do you take it?”

Derek swallowed. “Sorry?”

“I don’t have cream, but you can help yourself to some of Marnie’s milk,” Stiles told him absently, dropping a glass milk bottle down onto the table and settling in opposite Derek. He piled a tablespoon high with brown sugar and began swirling it into his coffee. Derek went for the milk, cheeks flushed red in the dim light.

Stiles stirred his coffee with his left hand.

The quiet morning was comfortable, despite the memories. Stiles must have been thinking of his grandfather too, because he looked up at Derek and said, apropos of nothing, “Laura says you knew my granddad.”

Derek screwed the cap back onto the milk jug. “Yeah,” he agreed.

Stiles looked at him tiredly – it was far too early for these conversations. “You’ll have to tell me about him someday,” he suggested, lightly. “Dad and I weren’t able to get out here much. I don’t think I visited the farm after I was… oh. Eight or nine.”

“Yeah,” Derek agreed. He thought he would have remembered if Stiles had ever come to visit. Or was that wishful thinking? _Had_ Stiles visited, and Derek just didn’t cross paths with him? 

He didn’t think so.

“She was also telling me about the harvest festival,” Stiles admitted. “I’m trying to figure out what I should put on display for the farm. Also – I’m kind of thinking of renaming it.”

“The farm?!”

“Yeah! I mean, ‘The Old Stilinski Farm’ doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. I could give it a catchy name, get some labels made up for the eggs…”

“You have _one chicken_ ,” Derek said, flatly.

“I do not!” Stiles waved his free hand, the other still wrapped in a death grip around the handle of the coffee cup. “I’ve upgraded to four. Haven’t you been paying attention to the town gossip? Sam and Alex love them. Alex puts them in his protein shakes, which is pretty gross, but hey.”

“You hang out with them a lot?”

Stiles snorted. “Not Alex. He’s kind of a dick, and Haley’s always trailing after him – that’s not a good look for anyone. Sam is cool though. He, Sebastian and Abigail seem really tight.” There was a note of something like longing in Stiles’ voice.

“You must miss your friends back home,” Derek realized aloud. He hadn’t put much thought into Stiles’ motivation for reclaiming the farm …but it would be hard to leave your friends and family and transplant to a new town. Surely there were people back home Stiles must miss.

“I do. I mean, it wasn’t the same after college. We used to do everything together, but now we’re all working. When you can’t spend every waking hour together, you actually go out and meet new people, form new interests…” Stiles trailed off, taking another long sip. The coffee had a visible effect on his attitude, squaring his shoulders up, making his features more focused and alert.

“Why’d you end up out here, anyway?” Derek asked, the coffee filling his body with a warm, quiet lassitude.

Stiles froze, coffee midway to his mouth, and Derek realized that this line of questioning might not be welcome. “I mean,” he hastily added, “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“I guess….” Stiles began, then trailed off. “I guess I just got tired of doing what was expected of me.”

Derek’s eyebrows lifted.

Stiles made a face. “Grow up, go to college, get a job, work that job ‘til you’re old and moldy and can’t walk properly, do a few bus tours, die. That’s the thing to do, right? That’s the track I was on.”

Derek blinked. “That’s what was expected of you?”

“it felt like that’s what people expected,” Stiles said, quietly. “The first bits were okay. I enjoyed school, I didn’t mind growing up. But once I got out there into the ‘real world’, I realized that a lot of what I enjoyed, and a lot of what I wanted, wasn’t accessible if I sat around doing what other people thought I should do.”

Derek felt a sudden and desperate urge to ask Stiles what he enjoyed, what he _really wanted_. His throat had gone all tight and hot, squashing back his effort to speak. Instead, he found himself asking: “What did you study?”

“Programming,” he said, with a shrug.

Derek blinked. “Programming?”

“I worked for a startup tech company” Stiles said with a shrug. “Working long hours for future stock options, that kind of thing. The concept was pretty cool, but the pressure was up there.”

Derek tried to imagine Stiles as a programming whiz kid, the kind of hipster techie who went to work in converse shoes, ironic t-shirts, and a beard. It wasn’t actually all that difficult to envision. 

He couldn’t help but mentally compare that version of Stiles with himself. Derek wasn’t simple, and he wasn’t stupid. But he’d never taken the time to apply himself to something as theoretically abstract as programming – he liked subjects that had immediate, tangible repercussions. In school he’d enjoyed maths, but physical education, chemistry, biology – classes that didn’t require him to stare through a microscope or find meaning through the lens of some dead author’s religious affiliation.

“It wasn’t for you?” he asked, weakly.

Stiles shrugged. “I was good at it - and I liked it. But I committed the cardinal sin of startup work and kind of fucked myself over.”

“What’s the cardinal sin?”

“Dating a colleague,” Stiles said, sheepishly. “You know. New venture, the promise of untold billions, late nights spent coding 

Derek grimaced back. “Oops.”

“Oops is right. And you know how it is. When you get tangled up in someone, everything is so fresh and new, and before you know it your lives are hopelessly entwined and you can’t give up the person without giving up … well. In my case it was basically everything else.”

Derek wasn’t sure what to say. He’d never had a relationship of that sort. Hell, he’d never had a real relationship, period. There had been Paige back in high school, but it had ended at graduation and they’d stayed friends, content to let their lives unfold in differing directions.

“So you gave it all up and moved to the countryside?”

Stiles snorted. “I wish - that sounds way more zen. We broke up publically and way dramatically at the office, I moved back in with my dad, and we were figuring out my options when someone made an offer on the farm.”

Derek stiffened in his seat. 

“We hadn’t been out here for at least a decade. But the minute the offer came in we both realized we had the perfect, slow-paced, quiet kind of place I could pull myself together in our back pocket and neither of us had even realized it.” 

Derek’s heart was hammering in his chest, so loudly that it drove the blood pulsing through his ears. “Do you know who made the offer?” he asked.

Stiles shook his head. “Nah. Honestly, we didn’t even consider it, we just kind of looked at each other and realized it wasn’t the right time to sell. I packed my bags that week. It took a little more time for things to get sorted out on the legal side, but dad formally signed the farm over to me and - well. Here I am.” 

“That …” Derek’s knuckles were white where he gripped his coffee mug. The very act of placing an offer on the Stilinski farm had put the property forever out of his reach. He’d never had a shot at the place at all. All those years of hoping, saving, walking along the fence and staring at the familiar, cozy farmhouse… 

Stiles broke into his thoughts for the second time that morning. “Derek? Buddy? You zoned out for a minute there.”

He looked up, met Stiles’ eyes, and all at once the anger and frustration bled away. He’d made plans for the farm, he staked his future on it. But if placing that offer had brought Stiles to town, at least something good had come from his dashed hopes. Stiles had needed an escape, and Derek had given him a way out without even meaning to. 

“Sorry,” Derek said, clearing his throat. “I was just - surprised. You’ve always seemed like you had your shit together. I never suspected you were recovering from such a shitty situation.”

Stiles smiled at him, hands wrapped around his mug. “Thanks. I mean - it’s weird. Ever since I arrived in town a lot of that hurt and frustration and anger leaked away. It’s hard to believe that was ever even my life.”

“I’ve always found working the earth to be therapeutic,” Derek offered, quietly. “It’s good work. Not that - you know, not that programming was terrible or anything, but...”

“I know what you mean,” Stiles said, smiling. “And I could still get back to programming remotely. I figure I’ll see how the year went, figure out if I can do this long-term. Ideally I’d end up with a -” his eyes darted away, cheeks pinking, “you know. A partner or someone to help around the farm, so that I could take some time to program on the side. Contract jobs and stuff to keep me up to date.”

Derek’s mouth went dry. He groped for something to say, something to diffuse the strange tension that had infiltrated the room. “So…. you’re saying you haven’t learned your lesson,” he finally said, clearing his throat.

“Huh?” 

“You’re gonna go right back into business with someone you’re dating,” Derek said, smirking. 

Stiles choked on his coffee, reaching out and swatting Dereks’ forearm with his good hand. Derek was relieved - it had clearly been the right thing to say. He might just escape this conversation with his dignity intact, after all.

“What can I say,” Stiles admitted, eyes dancing over the edge of his mug as he took another long swing. “I’m a true romantic.”

They finished their coffee and spent the morning mowing down swaths of hay, tying and stacking the bundles in a neat square adjacent to the nearly-complete silo. Robin joined them for lunch under one of Stiles’ apple trees, sharing some of her husbands’ famous Bunsen Burner Brownies. 

When Stiles began to favor his arm in earnest, Derek confiscated his scythe and ordered him to do the tying and stacking while he handled the heavy lifting. Though the man complained, there was an edge of relief to his expression that warmed Derek’s heart.

With each thwack of the scythe, Derek thought as hard as he could. _‘I could be that for you. I could be your partner. It could be me. It could be me. It should be me.’_

And if he caught Stiles staring as he stripped off his shirt in the hot afternoon sun - well. Maybe Stiles was thinking the same damn thing.

•○•

**...:Year 1, Summer 28:…**

•○•

The Moonlight Jelly migration moved along the coast of Stardew Hills in the last week of summer, taking with it the biting edge of the summer heat and signaling the end of the tour season. The evenings slowly grew cooler and cooler, until Derek was pulling a flannel shirt over his summer henleys and donning his favorite leather jacket on his way to the store each morning. The last of the summer corn was being washed and sold, and his father was hard at work harvesting a percentage of all they purchased for seed-crop, running it through the seedmaker and bagging up the results.

Derek worked late on the last night of summer, until it was dark and the evening crickets had long since fallen silent. He closed up the shop and armed the security system before locking the front door. He turned to face the looming darkness of night, shoving his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket. The town square was quiet, but the evening was still enough that voices from the distant beach carried over the rooftops. 

The sea breeze rifled through Derek’s short hair, carrying it with it the promise of cooler temperatures, plentiful harvests, and the promise of winter snow. 

If Derek had purchased the Stilinski farm he would have spent the winter months repairing the greenhouse, heaving strong beams into place, re-framing joints, and ordering tough, shatterproof glass for the new roof panes. He might have spent the long winter hours mining enough stone to put up proper garden and pasture walls, something more aesthetic and enduring than the haphazard split-rail fences Stiles had thrown together to save on cash. He would have spent the winter ice-fishing in the river by the Hale house, and used his catch to stock the small ponds on the property…

Would have, would have, would have.

He was almost to the beach when someone came jogging up from behind, quickly falling into pace with him. 

“Hey,” said Cora.

Derek’s eyes flickered over her face, then back to the cobblestone path before them. “Hey.”

They walked past the saloon and the small graveyard, aiming for the bridge that lead to the town’s small, white strand.

“I told mom and dad about BHU,” Cora said, digging her hands further into her pockets and not looking at Derek. Their shadows came together and then stretched away long and tall as they passed each lamppost along the path. Their posture was very similar – Derek and Cora had always shared a similarly stoic temperament.

“What did they say?” Derek asked, though he already knew the answer.

“They want me to go for it,” Cora said, a laugh in her voice. She was clearly in shock.

“Told you so,” Derek chorused, because he was her big brother – and also an asshole.

Cora snorted. “Supportive as always.”

“I do what I can.”

They walked to the edge of the beach, the sand growing deeper underfoot until Cora paused, leaning on Derek’s arm and slipping her shoes off. She let them dangle between her fingers as they proceeded, but didn’t drop her hold on Derek’s wrist as they went. They made their way towards the water, but angled slightly to the east, away from the crowded pier and towards a less-populous stretch of strand. 

They passed a few couples cozied up on wool blankets, waiting for the jellies to appear. Further down, a group of tourists had started a campfire and were busy toasting marshmallows.

Mayor Lewis, Evelyn, and Robin had been hard at work that afternoon setting out a series of lovely paper lanterns. Each contained a glowing bulb just bright enough to lure the jellyfish closer to the pier. Lydia insisted that the phosphorescence the moonlight jellyfish emitted was just an illusion – a refraction of outside light made brighter by the traditional lanterns lining the shore. Derek preferred to believe that the jellies were lit by some their own peaceful, quiet inner light.

It was Cora who interrupted the quiet sound of waves crashing against the sand. “Classes start in two weeks,” she said, quietly.

Derek stiffened. “That’s – that’s... sudden.”

His sister laugh at him. “Yeah, I suppose so.”

“They held your place that long?”

Cora didn’t look at him, but didn’t unlink their arms, either. “I accepted the offer earlier this summer. A few days after the luau, actually.”

Derek went all warm and soft at that confession. “That’s great, Cora.”

“Mom and dad agreed to cover my tuition for this term, but I’m going to do some scholarship hunting and stuff, try to find something to help with the cost of the spring semester. If that doesn’t work out…”

“Bank of Derek is always open,” Derek told her, before breaking into a grin and wrapping Cora up in a hug. “I’m proud of you, baby sis.”

“Ugh, you’re so gross,” Cora muttered grumpily into his shoulder, squeezing him tightly in return. 

Just then, the lanterns across the beach clicked off and they were left in darkness, their eyes slowly readjusting to the dim starlight, and the refracted glow of the moon on the surface of the sea. “Let’s go find the kids,” Derek said as Cora peeled away and snagged his arm again. 

He let her lead him back to the crowded pier, towards where their parents and uncle stood, shadows against the slowly-brightening sea.

There was a good turnout this year. Demetrius, Maru and Lydia were grouped just past his parents, while Stiles was sitting next to Sebastian and Abigail, and trailing his bare toes in the water. He’d been hanging around with Sebastian and Alex a lot, lately – Derek suspected he was officially a regular at the saloon. His injured arm was hidden beneath a flannel shirt, but Derek no longer scented blood or pain when he stopped by, so he knew it was healing well.

Joining the family, Derek settled cross-legged on the pier, the sloshing of water against wood ringing in his ears. Laura glanced sideways at him with a grin on her face – she obviously knew what he and Cora had been chatting about. “She’s all grown up, huh?”

“Sure is. When did _that_ happen?” Derek asked, only half-teasing.

“Who knows,” Laura laughed. On her other side, Lucy thrust a finger out towards the ocean and shouted in incoherent glee as the first jellyfish floated to the surface, crystal-clear and bioluminescent. It drifted towards the pier on breezy currents, long tentacles trailing out after it like the tail of a slow-motion comet.

They sat there for a long time, watching the jellyfish drift in like soap bubbles on an invisible breeze and then – as the tides turned – ebb away again into the deep darkness. Derek was excited for the fall - he was ready for long full-moon nights, warm mulled wine, and the crunch of leaves underfoot. He wanted to see Stiles wrapped in oversized sweaters, sipping hot cocoa and making home-made meringue with his farm-fresh eggs. He could feel it in his gut - it was going to be an unforgettable season.

•○•


End file.
